The comedy of Catherine the Great

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THE COMEDY OF
CATHERINE THE GREAT

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL WORKS
BY FRANCIS CRIBBLE

Madame de Stael and her Lovers

George Sand and her Lovers

Rousseau and the Women he Loved

Chateaubriand and his Court of Women

The Passions of the French Romantics

The Love Affairs of Lord Byron

Rachel : Her Stage Life and her Real Life

The Romantic Life of Shelley

Romances of the French Theatre

The Tragedy of Isabella IT

The Court of Christina of Sweden

The Life of the Emperor Francis Joseph

The Royal House of Portugal

Balzac : The Man and the Lover

Dumas : Father and Son

Emperor and Mystic

T^iiif^

u-ft^ -iiwr -^eA^ ^2^ a^a,iA^

PREFACE

One of M. de Vogue's delightful historical
essays opens with this passage —

" Have you no stall at the theatre this
evening ? Or is the play they are giving dull
and of indifferent merit ? Never mind — for you
can easily console yourself if you have any
volumes of history on your shelves. They
contain the inexhaustible repertory of the great
Human Comedy — that masterpiece of pathos
and irony which has never ceased to unfold
itself since the curtain of the firmament was
first raised upon this ancient stage. Works of
history are like the statesmen whose proceedings
they relate. Viewed from a distance by those
who do not really know them, they seem to be
of a severe and forbidding gravity, entirely occu-
pied with grandiose designs, worthy of the respect
which dwells on the yonder side of boredom.
But there is no need to be alarmed either by
folios or by potentates. Insinuate yourself into
their confidence ; strip off their masks ; look
for what lies beneath theii' magniloquent
phrases and their garb of ceremony. Then

V

PREFACE

you will discover that these great companions
of yours are of flesh and blood like yourself,
and laugh and weep as you do. Life would
be infinitely amusing — would it not ? — if
one could live with no emotion but that of
curiosity, always a spectator of the drama, and
never an actor in it. Very well. History is
only the life which lies behind us, and is therefore
free from menace for the looker-on. Like life,
it belongs to the unbridled romantic school,
devoid of respect for the classical distinctions
between different artistic genres. All elements
jostle in it — the sublime with the ridiculous —
the farcical with the pathetic. You never know
how it is going to affect you — whether it will
move you to fear or to pity, to laughter or to
indignation. Very often it will happen that
you will pass through all these emotions in a
single moment of time."

That is how M. dc Vogue preludes his narrative
of the death of Catherine the Great ; and the
passage may stand just as appropriately at the
head of the story of her Life. At all events, it
shall stand here as a description, happily ex-
pressed, of the spirit in which the present biog-
raphy has been undertaken. The object which
the biographer has pursued in his perusal of many
volumes — some of them undeniably of a severe
and forbidding aspect — is simply that Human
Comedy which is tlic one thing of permanent and
universal interest in history, though historians
vi

PREFACE

are apt to overlook it, whether through a mis-
taken zeal for the dignity of history, or because
they need their space for matters concerning
which students are more likely to be questioned
by examiners.

Let it be freely granted, therefore, that the
present contribution to historical biography is
not intended " for the Schools," as we say at
Oxford, or " for the Tripos," as they say at
Cambridge. Students who study solely for the
purpose of being examined will be far more
profitably occupied in perusing the pages of
MorfiU, of Rambaud, and of the Cambridge
Modern History, than in reading what lies
between these covers. But a public of students
is not the only public which it is permissible
for a writer of history to address. There are
also those who, while they lack the leisure (and
perhaps the inclination) to pore over the texts
of treaties, or to follow all the cross currents
of past political intrigue, have a keen interest
in the drama of history and an equally keen
desire to know more of the men and women who
have played leading parts in that drama. That
is the public to which this book is offered.

It is offered the more earnestly because
Catherine's reputation has suffered at least as
much from the silence of the discreet and serious
as from the reckless slanders of the gossips.
While the latter have often assailed her with
calumnies which are obviously untrue, the
reticence of the former has done a good deal

vii

PREFACE

to gain those calumnies credence. Morfill, in
particular, for example, deliberately and ostenta-
tiously " draws a veil " over levities and scandals
at which he darkly hints — so leaving his readers
with such an impression as they might get if
conducted to the portal of Madame Tussaud's
Chamber of Horrors, and then forbidden to
enter on the ground that the sights within were
too painful and shocking for them.

Such a policy does not seem to rest upon right
reason even when pursued at waxwork shows.
It is altogether without justification when our
guide is conducting us through the corridors of
history. Exciting the reader's imagination with-
out satisfying his curiosity, it induces him to
draw unwarrantable inferences on the ancient
principle : Omne ignotum pro horrifico. It may
be proper to take the risk in the cases in which
nothing worse than the truth is likely to be
imagined or invented — in such a case, for instance,
as that of Tiberius at Capri; but, in the vast
majority of cases, such significant and ostentatious
discretion only results in creating a misleading
and calumnious legend. It has certainly done
so in the case of Catherine the Great.

There is a legendary Catherine, summed up
in the phrase, " The Messalina of the North."
The implication is that we have only to look up
Messalina in the Classical Dictionary in order
to know what the ordinary histories do not tell
us about Catherine ; that while, in her public
capacity, she distinguished herself as the most
viii

PREFACE

illustrious sovereign of her time, her private life
was full of unimaginable horrors ; that, if she
did not actually procure the murder of her
husband and her rivals, she was the sort of
woman who would cheerfully have done so ;
that the life at her Court was an unceasing round
of shameless licentiousness. Her present bio-
grapher has even discovered intelligent people
under the impression that she was a woman
who made a practice of murdering her paramours.
When silence has given birth and colour to
such slanders, the case for telling the truth
hardly needs to be laboured.

The truth is that Catherine was a woman
not only of exceptional ability but also of
exceptional charm ; and that, if she had to be
placed on her defence before a jury of matrons
commissioned to judge her by modern moral
standards, she would be able to plead, in the
language of the criminals who are only criminal
through circumstance, that she had " never had
a chance."

Her moral education, such as it was, ceased
when she was about fourteen. She was then
carried off from her bourgeois German home to
Russia, and married to a drunken fool, who
never felt or showed affection for her, but
flaunted his infidelities in her face, and, in the
end, threatened to repudiate her and send her
to a nunnery. Severed from the associations
of her childhood, in a country of which she did
not know the language, compelled to conform

ix

PREFACE

to a strange religion, she found herself, at the
impressionable age, in conditions in which she
could hardly fail to lose her moral bearings.
That the Empress under whose tutelage she
lived had lovers was notorious ; and no one
about her Court — not even the Court Chaplain —
professed to be surprised or shocked. It would
have been too much to expect a slip of a girl to
hold alcrft the banner of Puritanism in such
surroundings. Catherine would not have been
allowed to do so if she had tried.

A first lover was presently thrown at her
head, for dynastic reasons, by the very guardians
who had the supervision of her morals. A
second lover was, shortly afterwards, thrown
at her head, for diplomatic reasons, by the
Russian Chancellor, acting in conjunction with
the British Ambassador. A third lover eventu-
ally became necessary as a protection against
the husband who proposed to imprison her in
a nunnery. After her husband's death, she
would have married this third lover, if her
subjects would have let her ; but they told
her to her face in the Senate that she was wel-
come to have " favourites," but that she must
reign without a consort. Our imaginary jury
of matrons, placed in possession of these facts,
would have to agree that this was a combination
of circumstances to which the conventional
maxims of morality were irrelevant.

The statement of the facts, however, and the
exposition of the circumstances are essential

X

PREFACE

to any attempt to rescue Catherine's reputation
and reconstruct her personahty. She has been
damned by silence, sneers, and shrugs of the
shoulders. She has nothing to lose, and a great
deal to gain, from candid treatment. It is not
to be expected that she will emerge from the
inquiry with the spotless robes of a saint ; but
there will be as little need to array her in the
white sheet of the penitent. The superlatives —
or a good many of them — will have to go.
Catherine will, in the end, appear neither so
great as she seemed to Voltaire nor so licentious
as she seemed to Laveaux ; but more human
— more womanly — than she seemed to either of
them. Above all, it is to be hoped, her charm
will be made manifest.

To her charm, indeed, the testimony of the
witnesses is well-nigh unanimous. There were
differences of opinion as to her genius, but few
as to her power of pleasing. About that, the
lovers in possession agreed with the discarded
lovers ; and the opinion which they shared in
common was endorsed by Catherine's ladies-in-
waiting, ministers, and servants, who wept for
her, when she died, as for a mother, and by the
Ambassadors from the foreign Courts.

The Ambassadors, it is true, did not always
admire without reservation. Their angles of
vision were those of their respective nationalities ;
and in one case^ — that of James Harris, first
Earl of Malmesbury — the angle of vision was
not easily distinguishable from that of Mrs.

xi

PREFACE

Grundy. The consequence was that the comedy
of Catherine's proceedings did not escape their
notice. James Harris was shocked by that
comedy, much as a bishop might be shocked by
a performance of Pink Dominoes. His colleagues
— and more particularly his French colleagues
— smiled at it, but with indulgence. " Weakly
sentimental " is the worst epithet that the
Chevalier de Corberon could find it in his heart
to apply to her.

" Weakly sentimental " she indubitably was ;
and she grew more and more weakly sentimental
as she grew older — as old friends died and dis-
appeared— as the world became " depopulated
in her heart," and she was more and more op-
pressed by a sense of isolation in her grandeur.
In the beginning, no doubt, her sentimentalism
was a little too ostentatious ; and, in the end,
it made her rather ridiculous. That will appear
as we proceed. But sentiment, however it dis-
plays itself, commands a respect which mere
gallantry does not command ; and when it
exhibits itself in comedy, it keeps comedy, how-
ever occasionally farcical, on a higher level than
farce. It makes sympathy possible ; and the
Human Comedy makes a wider appeal when it
is " sympathetic," even though the scene is
laid among the splendours of a Court.

Every student of Catherine's life is bound
to confess himself deeply indebted to M.
Waliszewski's two long monographs on her
xii

PREFACE

reign. They are monographs, however, not
biographies — collections of essays, not con-
secutive narratives ; and their existence, there-
fore, did not seem to present any insuperable
reason for abstaining from a fresh attempt to
present a full and faithful portrait of Catherine
to the English reader. The other authorities
used are the various reminiscences of the period,
the ambassadorial dispatches recently reprinted
by the St. Petersburg Academic des Sciences,
and Catherine's own Memoirs.

The authenticity of those Memoirs, which
was for a long time disputed, may be taken
to be established by their inclusion in the
Russian collected edition of Catherine's writings.
The matter now printed incorporates a good
deal which was not included in the only text
formerly available ; and careful attention has
been paid to the material thus added.

xni

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

Birth ami Parentage — Childhood — The Summons to

Russia ...... 1

CHAPTER n
Arrival in Russia — Betrothal to the Grand Duke Peter . 9

CHAPTER HI

Marriage — Unpleasant Character of the Grand Duke —

Flirtation with Andrew Czemichef . . .20

CHAPTER IV

Tribulations of Married Life — Restrictions on Liberty —
Flirtations with Zachar Czemichef — Introduction of
Soltikof— Birth of an Heir . . . .33

CHAPTER V

Removal of Restrictions — Liaison with Poniatowski —

The Intrigues of Bestuchef . . • .45

CHAPTER VI

Catherine suspected of Complicity with Bestuchef — A
Scene with the Empress — Retmii of Poniatowski to
Poland — Catherine's consolatory Adventures . 59

XV

CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII

PAGE

Intrigues by the Empress's Death-Bed — Panin — Princess
Dashkof — The Brothers Orlof — Death of the Empress
Elizabeth, and Accession of Peter iii. . . 70

CHAPTER VIII

Policy of Peter ni. — lU-Treatment of Catherine — Her

Conspiracy . . . . .82

CHAPTER IX
The Revolution of 1762— The March against Peter . 92

CHAPTER X

Surrender of Peter — His Deposition by Death in Prison

— By whose Order was he killed ? . . ,103

CHAPTER XI
The Story of Ivan vi. — His Assassination in Prison .120

CHAPTER XII

Catherine signals to Europe — Her Overtures to French
Philosophers — Gregory Orlofs Invitation to Jean-
Jacques Rousseau . . . . .129

CHAPTER XIII

Life at Catherine's Court — Bestuchefs Proposal that she

should Marry Gregory Orlof . . .141

CHAPTER XIV

The Search for Precedents — The Failure to find any —
Objections of the Senate — Gregory Or' >f established
in the Post of Favourite . , . .152

xvi

CONTENTS

CHAPTER XV

FACE

Catherine's Foreign Policy — The kidnapping of Princess

Tarakanof . . , . . .166

CHAPTER XVI
The Visit of Diderot — The Insurrection of Pugachef . 180

CHAPTER XVII

Intrigues against Gregory Orlof — His Supersession in

the Post of Favourite by Vasilchikof. . .195

CHAPTER XVIII

Marriage, Travels, Misfortunes, and Death of Gregory

Orlof. . . . . . .205

CHAPTER XIX

Gregory Potemkin — His Early Life — His Military
Services — His Promotion to be Favourite in place
of Vasilchikof . . .213

CHAPTER XX

Potemkin's Inordinate Ambitions — His Desire to Marry
Catherine — His Retention of his Public Offices after
ceasing to be Favourite — Rise and Fall of Zavadovski 224

CHAPTER XXI

M. de Cox'beron at St. Petersburg — His Reports on the

Favourites — Zavadovski — Korsakof — Zoritch . 234

CHAPTER XXII

Further Favourites — The Reign of Lanskoi— His Death

— The Reign of Yermolof .... 248

b xvii

CONTENTS

CHAPTER XXIII

PAGE

The Accession of Mamonof .... 260

CHAPTER XXIV
Catherine's Journey to her Crimean Dominions . . 26p

CHAPTER XXV

Interview with Poniatowski — The Crimean Journey

continued — Return to St. Petersburg , . 282

CHAPTER XXVI

Retirement of Mamonof and Accession of Plato Zubof . 29.')

CHAPTER XXVII

Zubof and Potemkin — The great Stage-Managers of
Catherine's Empire — Particularities of Potemkin's
Private Life . . . . .305

CHAPTER XXVIII

Return of Potemkin to St. Petersburg — Rumours of his

Marriage to Catherine — His Death . . . 320

CHAPTER XXIX
The unconscionable Manners and Conduct of Plato Zubof 330

CHAPTER XXX

Catherine's Family Life — Her Son and her Grandchildren 343

CHAPTER XXXI

Last Years and Death ..... 3')6

INDEX . . . . . . . .'j67

xviii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Catherine the Great as a Girl . . . Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

The Empress Elizabeth of Russia . . . .62

Peter HI. of Russia . . • . .110

Catherine the Great (on Horseback) , . . lf)2

Catherine the Great . . - . .262

Catherine the Great (Full-length Portrait) . . 3.32

XIX

THE COMEDY OF
CATHERINE THE GREAT

CHAPTER I

Birth and Parentage — Childhood — The Summons to Russia

Gossips used to whisper that the real father of
Catherine the Great of Russia was Frederick
the Great of Prussia. That, we may take it,
is an aitiological myth : an attempt to explain
Catherine by means of a worthy, though ir-
regular, heredity ; compliment joining hands with
calumny in the legend. It is a legend, however,
which no tittle of evidence supports ; and a
serious biographer must sweep past it, merely
noting the need felt for it by a world which the
genius of Catherine perplexed. Enthusiasts, it
would seem, have found it hard to believe
that so great and glorious a sovereign could
have been the child of a minor German potentate
— a " sort of a" prince, described by a French
ambassador as " of quite exceptional imbecility";
but that was nevertheless the fact. Catherine
(as she was to be rechristened) was the daughter
of Prince Christian-Augustus of Anhalt-Zerbst,

A 1

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

who, at the age of thirty- seven, married Princess
EHzabeth of Holstein-Gottorp. Her baptismal
names were Augusta-Sophia-Frederica ; her
family and intimate friends called her " Fig-
chen " ; she was born in 1729.

Probably she was born at Stettin, though
the honour has also been claimed for Dornburg ;
but that is no great matter. The existence
of the mystery is more significant than the
solution of it could possibly be. It marks, as
scarcely anything else could, the contrast between
her obscure origin and her splendid destiny.
She was to be an Empress — not merely the
consort of an Emperor, but an Empress in her
own right, and the most remarkable figure among
the rulers of her time ; but her birth attracted
so little attention that historians cannot decide
for certain which of two small German towns
was the scene of it. Such evidence as there
is, however, favours Stettin ; ^ and it was at
Stettin, at all events, that Catherine grew up.

She was nobody in particular, and there was
no reason to expect tht^t she ever would be
anybody in particular. Her parents stood in
pretty much the same relation towards the
crowned heads of the period as that in which the
so-called '' backwoodsmen " of our own House
of Lords stand towards those peers who really
influence the fortunes of the State. The atmo-
sphere of their home was one of provincialism

^ Catherine herself states in her Memoirs that she was born
at Stettin.
o

CHILDHOOD

and' shabby gentility. The poor relations of
royal houses, they associated chiefly with the
professional society of the upper middle classes.
Their daughter is said to have played in the
streets with the daughters of officers and
Civil servants. Very likely she did ; but we
have no particulars — or none worth mentioning.
Catherine's recollections of her childhood arc
not very rich in anecdote, though a picturesque
fact or two may be rescued from them.

She remembered, for instance, the marriage
of her first governess, Madeleine Cardel, to a
lawyer named Colhard, though she was only
four at the time : '' They gave me too much to
drink at the wedding breakfast, with the result
that I screamed and said that I wouldn't go to
bed unless Mme Colhard let me go to bed with
her." She also remembered being saved from a
threatened deformity by a bone-setter whom her
parents only called in with reluctance because
his principal profession was that of public
executioner ; and another interesting memory
is that of her early course of religious instruction,
which soon resolved itself into a series of argu-
ments with her instructor, who desired the
governess to birch his pupil for refusing to believe
that Marcus Aurelius and other great men of
antiquity would be damned for their ignorance
of the divine revelation.

And then there were certain recollections
of certain talks about marriage, not intended
for her cars —

3

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

" (Bolhagen ^) in the year 1736 was reading
the gazette in my room. It contained the news
of the marriage of my cousin, Princess Augusta
of Saxe-Gotha, to the Prince of Wales, son of
King George ii. of England ; and he said to
Mile Cardel, ' That girl, you know, is not
nearly so well educated as this child here, — and
she isn't any prettier, — and yet, you see, she's
going to be Queen of England. Who knows
what destiny may have in store for our little
one ? ' "

After that, Catherine says, she began to
think and dream of crowns ; but the crown
which was actually to be hers was regarded as
far out of her reach —

" Sometimes they amused themselves by
discussing to whom they would marry me ;
but when the name of the young Duke of
Holstein was mentioned, my mother always
said, ' Oh no ! He needs a wife whose credit
and influence would be useful in supporting his
great claims and pretensions. My daughter
is not grand enough for him.' "

Those anecdotes constitute very nearly the
sum total of what Catherine has told us of her
younger days. Laveaux, her future husband's
biographer, adds a scandal, crediting her with a
lover — a certain mysterious " Count B " ;

^ A functionary at the little Court.

4

CHILDHOOD

but that is rather obviously nonsense — inspired,
as one supposes, by the theory that the child
must have been mother to the woman, and that
coming events must of course have cast shadows
before them. It may be dismissed, like the story
of her mother's liaison with Frederick the Great,
as a legend fabricated because the need was felt
for it. Confining ourselves to facts, we find
that we know practically nothing except that
Catherine was frequently reproved by Mile
Cardel^ for an awkward habit of sticking out
her chin. Beyond that unimportant trait, we
only read of certain "displacements" : journeys
to Eutin, to Zerbst, and even as far as Berlin,
where Catherine's portrait was painted.

It is not clear that she knew why it was
painted, or for the satisfaction of whose curiosity.
There is no reason to suppose that she traced
any connection between the painting of that
portrait (which was sent as a present to the
Empress Elizabeth of Russia) and the sudden,
and quite undeserved, promotion of her father
to the military rank of Field-Marshal. There
were wheels within wheels there ; but they
revolved invisibly. Catherine was only fourteen
— too young to understand, or even to suspect.
She knew, of course, that her mother was one of
the Russian Empress's " poor relations " ; but
the Empress had not, so far, shown her family
any remarkable kindness, and, even now, she

' Babet Cardel, who succeeded to the office vacated by her
sister's marriage.

5

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

did not appear to be in any hurry to do so. A
year passed ; and, to a child of fourteen, a year
seems a very long time. But then, at the end
of the year, a strange thing happened suddenly.

The place was Zerbst, and the time was
December 1743. The family were keeping
Christmas in the festive German style, when a
courier galloped to the door, and delivered a
letter for the Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst from one
Brummer, formerly tutor to the young Duke
of Holstein, now the Grand Duke Peter, heir
apparent to the Russian crown, and at present
his Master of the Court.

The letter was nothing less than an invitation
from the Empress to her poor relation, expressed,
of course, almost as a command. Princess
Elizabeth was to come to Russia at once, and
present herself at the Court, whether it happened
to be at St. Petersburg or at Moscow ; . and
she was to bring her daughter with her. Her
husband must, on no account, be of the party ;
and she must dispense with all preparations
which would involve delay. A lady-in-waiting,
a couple of maids, an equerry, a cook, and a
footman or two — that was all the escort she
would need. Whatever else she required would
be provided for her when she reached Riga.
A draft on a German bank to defray the cost of
the journey was enclosed ; and she was strictly
enjoined not to gossip as to its object. If she
felt it absolutely necessary to confide in some one,
then she might confide in Frederick the Great,
6

THE SUMMONS TO RUSSIA

who was in the secret, and would be able to
give further information.

An astounding letter truly to burst upon a
quiet Christmas party in a German provincial
town ! It was followed, after an interval of
only two hours, by a second letter, not less
amazing, also delivered by special courier, from
Frederick himself, supplying the additional in-
formation which the first letter had promised.
The journey, Frederick explained, had matrimony
for its goal. Catherine (or Sophia, as she was
then called) was to go to Russia to be betrothed
to the heir to the Russian throne — that Grand
Duke for whom her mother had supposed her
" not grand enough." That was why the
portrait had been painted, and that was why
Prince Christian-Augustus had been made a
Field-Marshal. The wires, in short, had been
carefully pulled ; and the end to which they
had been pulled was now in sight. The invita-
tion of the Empress must be regarded as a
command, and obeyed.

That was the dramatic end of Catherine's
girlhood. She tells us that she divined the cause
of her parents' excitement before it was com-
municated to her, and that she astonished her
mother by handing her a sheet of paper on which
she had written the couplet —

" Augure de tout
Que Pierre III sera ton epoux."

But that is as it may be ; for Catherine's retro-
spective imagination was rather riotous, and she

7

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

was very fond of fancying that she had liad
early premonitions of her glory. Her destiny,
at any rate, was planned for her without refer-
ence to her inclinations ; and already, when
barely fifteen, she was treated as a pawn in the
game of the diplomatists — albeit a pawn which
was presently to be queened and to dominate the
board.

That said, we must pause to examine the
conditions of the board and the circumstances
which had caused the new piece to be brought
into play.

8

CHAPTER II

Arrival in Russia — Betrothal to the Grand Duke Peter

The Russian Succession, in the first half of the
eighteenth century, may be said to have
depended upon rules which were uniformly
broken. The rule was that the reigning
sovereign nominated a member of his family
to succeed him ; the machinery for breaking
the rule was a Palace Revolution. A usurper,
male or female, corrupted the Imperial Guard,
marched on the Palace, — preferably at the dead
of night, — murdered or arrested the Tsar (or
Regent), and proceeded to rule in his place.
Such acts of violence were almost as frequent
as general elections in England at the present
time, and were regarded as natural incidents
in the rough-and-tumble of family quarrels.
The silent millions of the Russian people had
no concern with them, but acquiesced apatheti-
cally in the results.

The Empress Elizabeth, the only surviving
daughter of Peter the Great, attained the
throne, through such a revolution, at the age
of thirty-two, in 1741. The Tsar Ivan vi.,

9

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

a minor, was locked up in the fortress of
Schliisselburg. His mother and guardian, the
Grand Duchess Anne Leopoldovna, together
with her husband. Prince Anton-Ulrich of
Brunswick, was sent to live in a small town on
the shores of the White Sea ; and Elizabeth
proceeded, according to the rules of the game,
to select an heir among her kindred.

It is hardly likely that she played the game
for her amusement, or even for the satisfaction
of her personal ambition. According to the most
credible witnesses, she was a weak, vain woman,
not without charm, but at once superstitious
and frivolous, equally addicted to long prayers,
lovers, and luxury. Her very weakness, how-
ever, made her a convenient instrument in the
hands of the intriguers who desired the revolu-
tion. The German influences at the Court had
been too strong to please them. Tired of
being exploited by Germans, they put Elizabeth
forward as the representative of the patriotic
Russian interest, and triumphed in her name.
Their German enemies — Ostermann, Munnich,
and the rest — were marched off to Siberia ;
and Elizabeth, having no child of her own, —
none, at all events, whom she could acknowledge,
— named as her successor her nephew, Peter-
Ulrich, son of her sister Anna, who had married
Karl-Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp. This youth,
then fourteen years of age, was fetched
from Kiel to St. Petersburg in 1742, and was
known thenceforward as the Grand Duke Peter.
10

BETROTHAL

Young though he was, the question of find-
ing a wife for him was almost immediately
raised ; and the starting oif it set the wire-
pullers to work in the principal European
Chancelleries.

Bestuchef, the Russian Chancellor, desired
an alliance which should combine the interests
of Russia, Saxony, Austria, Holland, and Great
Britain against those of France and Prussia ;
but France and Prussia also had something to
say in the matter, and had their supporters at
the Russian Court. We need not enter into all
the details of their machinations — it suffices to
relate the issue of them. French, Saxon, Polish,
and Prussian princesses were successively pro-
posed and rejected. It was represented that
the religious difficulty would be less with a
Lutheran than with a Catholic princess. It was
also represented that, the less important the
princess selected, the more amenable the
Russians would be likely to find her. Then,
after the way had thus been paved, Frederick
the Great pressed the claims of his own candi-
date : the only surviving daughter of Prince
Christian of Anhalt-Zerbst.

There, of course, we see quite clearly the
inwardness alike of Prince Christian's unmerited
preferment to the rank of Field-Marshal and of
the painting of his daughter's portrait. Princess
Sophia had been brought up as a Lutheran ;
she might fairly have been described, at that
date, as the least of all the princesses ; and her

11

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

appearance was attractive. Probably, when the
issue was hanging in the balance, her personal
attractiveness decided it ; for that was a con-
sideration to which, rightly or wrongly, more
weight was attached in Russia than at the other
Courts of Europe — a point which may be
illustrated by the strange story of the choice of
a bride by the Tsar Michael.

When Michael made up his mind to marry,
he organised a kind of beauty show at the
Palace. All the marriageable daughters of
the nobility then in Moscow were summoned
to the Imperial presence and instructed to
bring their night-dresses. A large dormitory
was provided for them, and they were put to
bed in a row. In the course of the night, the
Tsar, accompanied by his mother, made a tour
of the dormitory. The charms of the sleepers
were duly considered and compared, and the
most desirable of them was selected and married,
in spite of the fact that she was poor and of
humble station. This ceremony, which took
place in the middle of the seventeenth century,
and is gravely recorded by a serious Russian
historian, is a valuable piece of evidence as to
the position of women in Russia, and not,
perhaps, without significance as a precedent for
the choice of the humble Princess of Anhalt-
Zerbst as the consort of the Russian heir
apparent.

At all events, the choice did fall on her —
and fell with the dramatic suddenness which
12

BETROTHAL

we have seen : a courier galloping to the door,
and a transformation akin to that effected in the
lot of Cinderella by the magic wand of the
fairy godmother. Splendours, she was assured,
such as she had never dreamed of awaited her
as soon as she crossed the frontier. She must
make haste — make haste. Messenger after
messenger arrived, urging her to lose no time ;
and her mother was a woman who could be
trusted, in such a case, to see to it that no time
was lost. The summons arrived, as we have
seen, at Christmas 1743 ; the date of the
departure was 10th January 1744. Catherine
was not yet fifteen — still in the schoolroom,
and with an unstocked wardrobe. Her outfit
consisted of " two or three dresses, twelve
chemises, and an equal number of stockings
and pocket-handkerchiefs." The notables of
Zerbst are said to have assembled to wish her
luck in her great adventure ; and she is said
to have announced her resolve to " reign alone
over this great Empire." But these are stories
in which one once more suspects the imaginative
handiwork of the mythologist.

Berlin, where the girl arrived without even a
Court dress, was the first stage ; and the second
was Schwedt on the Oder. There Catherine
parted from her father, whom she was never
to see again ; and his last paternal act was to
hand her a roll of manuscript containing his
hints for her deportment at the Russian Court.
He exhorted his daughter to order herself lowly

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

and reverently to all her betters ; to try her
hardest to make her husband happy ; to be care-
ful with her money ; not to get into debt or to
concern herself with politics ; not to allow any
friend to be on too intimate terms with her.
It is pretty much the advice which any father
of modest station might have given to any
daughter whose marriage was about to promote
her to embarrassing and unfamiliar grandeur.
It is quite authentic ; and there is no reason
whatever to suspect irony in the daughter's
recorded expression of thanks for it. She was
only fourteen, and irony is not an attribute of
that tender age.

She drove on, with her mother, through
Memel, along the road to Riga — travelling
post, and travelling quite as uncomfortably
as lowlier persons. The roads were shocking,
and the inns were worse. Six horses had to be
hired for each of the four lumbering carriages
— not for the sake of grandeur, but simply to
avoid sticking in the mud. The guest chambers
in which the travellers slept at the post stations
were like so many pigsties. It was as if the
journey itself were an allegory designed to
illustrate and emphasise the coming transition
in the bride's fortunes.

That transition began at Mittau, and was
completed at Riga, where the caravan arrived
on 6th February. There banquets were spread,
and a suite of luxurious apartments was ready,
and officers in splendid uniforms, glittering with
14

BETROTHAL

orders, knelt to kiss hands ; and the rest of the
journey was a triumphal procession, escorted
by a detachment of the Holstein regiment of
cuirassiers, and attended by servants of every
grade and description : butlers, and cooks, and
confectioners — including a special cook to make
the coffee; footmen, and grooms, and farriers.
The sledge in which the travellers rode was
scarlet, and was lined with fur. They lay at
full length in it on silk mattresses, resting their
heads on damask pillows, with a satin cDverlet
drawn over them. And so to St. Petersburg,
and thence, following the Court in its migration,
to Moscow, drawn, on the last day, by sixteen
horses, taking the last stages at a headlong
gallop, and covering the last fifty miles in a short
three hours, until they clattered into the court
of the Wooden Palace, where courtiers bowed
low, and soldiers presented arms, and the Grand
Duke Peter, in his impatience, gave them no
time to change their travelling dresses, but
there and then embraced his promised bride —
" most affectionately," as her mother reported
to her father.

He was not yet quite sixteen, so that his
impatience accorded with his years. The
portrait, it is evident, had made the desired
impression ; and the impression was not be-
lied by the reality. One may fairly use the
hackneyed expression, and say that " all went
merrily as a marriage bell" — for the first few
weeks, at all events. " We are living like

15

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

queens," the Princess of Zerbst reported to her
husband. As for her daughter — " the Empress
is most kind to her, and the heir apparent is
madly in love with her." But her daughter's
Reminiscences cannot be said to echo the en-
thusiasm. She speaks of herself as the slave
of duty, and complains of her fiance's lack of
ardour. " All girls," she protests, " however
carefully brought up, like compliments and
expressions of tenderness." She did not hear
any ; she was too proud to take the initiative in
the matter ; so she consoled herself by " playing
games " with her attendants.

Meanwhile, however, she allowed herself to
be " converted " ; and she preserved to the
end of her life a keen sense of the ease with
which such changes of the heart could be
effected. " It can be done in a fortnight," she
said when it was necessary to convert the bride
selected for her own son ; which sounds cynical,
but is not altogether without plausibility — for
if reason, as the religious tell us, has nothing
to do with the choice of a creed, it is hard
to say what considerations save those of con-
venience remain to be consulted. And Catherine,
at any rate, delighted all truly religious Russians
by preferring an Orthodox priest to a Lutheran
pastor when she fell ill and was assumed to
need spiritual comfort. Possibly that scene was
arranged for her by her elders, with an eye to
effect ; but the effect was indubitably produced.
Her illness was pleurisy ; and her recovery
16

p

BETROTHAL

was almost miraculous, for she was bled sixteen
times in a month. Her pallor, when she
began to be convalescent, so impressed the
Empress that she sent her a pot of rouge, with
her compliments and an injunction to use
plenty of it. The Grand Duke himself soon
afterwards fell ill, — first with measles, and then
with smallpox, — and emerged from the sick-
room deeply pock-marked, and with a shaven
head, covered with a gigantic and ludicrous wig.
The transformation was not, of course, particu-
larly favourable to romance ; and Catherine is
said to have fainted with horror at the spectacle.
A girl young enough, as she then was, to find
her chief pleasure in playing blind man's buff
with her ladies-in-waiting may very well have
done so. But this painful change in the per-
sonal appearance of her future husband was
not her only trouble. It coincided with the
discovery that Peter was a young barbarian
with the manners of an unlicked cub.

There were other annoyances. Her mother
was fussy ; the Empress was capricious.
Catherine was reprimanded for running into
debt, for staying out too late in the Palace
grounds, for living on too familiar terms with
the least desirable of the ladies placed in attend-
ance on her. She was also worried by Palace
jealousies and intrigues, the inwardness of which
she was too young to understand. Ail that,
however, was only the ordinary trouble of a
high-spirited schoolgirl, prematurely launched
B 17

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

in adult society. She could have laughed her
way lightly through it if she had been in love
and had looked forward with delighted anticipa-
tion to her wedding day. But she was not in
love, and it would be idle to argue that she
ought to have been. No other girl would have
been likely to love Peter any more than she
loved him. Peter was, as we have said, an
unlicked cub ; and Catherine's Memoirs furnish
us with abundant particulars to support that
charge.

Peter, as Catherine paints him for us, was
at once a big baby and a precocious roue. One
of his first confidences to his young fiancee
related to an " affair " with one of the Empress's
maids-of-honour, who had, he said, been banished
to Siberia for his sake. That, it seems, was
his cubbish way of acting on the motto : Se
faire valoir. For the rest, he was of a temper
alternately violent and sulky, addicted to
practical jokes in the society of ladies, spent
most of his time in playing at soldiers with his
valets, and a good deal of the rest of it in playing
with dolls and other toys. So that —

'' As my wedding day approached, I grew
more and more melancholy. My heart told
me that I should derive no happiness from my
marriage ; but ambition sufficed to sustain me.
In the depths of my heart I felt the premonition
that, some day, sooner or later, I should be the
sole sovereign ruler of the Russian Empire.'^
18

BETROTHAL

So she is said to have reflected ; while
Lord Hyndford, the British Ambassador, wrote
home for " some Enghsh stuffs," suitable for
wedding presents, remarking that " when one
has to do with ladies, one must have something
in the female way." We need not believe all
that she tells us about her ambitions and her
confidence that they would be realised, but
we can hardly help believing some of it. She
was only fifteen ; she had been placed in a
position from which there was no drawing
back ; and she had to reconcile herself to it
somehow. No doubt she sought her consola-
tion (whether she found it or not) by thinking
of the throne, and trying to forget the loutish
heir to it.

19

CHAPTER III

Marriage — Unpleasant character of the Grand Duke —
Fhrtation with Andrew Czernichef

" Their imperial highnesses," writes the British
Ambassador, " were married on August 21.
The procession was the most magnificent that
ever was known in this country, and surpassed
anything I ever saw." The bride, he might
have added, was only sixteen, and the bride-
groom only seventeen years of age.

The latter' s character was already formed,
for it was the sort of character that does not
take much forming. He was a half-baked, ill-
conditioned lout, and was to remain a half-
baked, ill-conditioned lout until the end.
Catherine, on the contrary, was a high-spirited
schoolgirl, but with possibilities of ardour,
intellect, and character unsuspected as yet
either by herself or by any of those about her.
She had begun to read, and discovered that
she liked reading. The time was soon to come
when she would always have a book in her
pocket or under her pillow, except when she
had one in her hand. Beginning with fiction,
20

MARRIAGE

she quickly passed to history and philosophy.
It is not clear whether she preferred Bayle's
Dictionary, Madame de Sevigne's Letters, or
Brantome's Dames Galantes. She studied all
three authors, and each of them influenced her
in some degree. No doubt she came the more
easily under their influence because of the dull-
ness of her life.

She and her husband soon, and for some time,
found themselves the objects of a kind of perse-
cution brought upon them by no fault of their
own. Their marriage had represented a tempor-
ary triumph of German influence at the Russian
Court, and had been concluded in spite of the
wishes of Bestuchef, the Chancellor already
mentioned, who represented the national Russian
party. This eclipse of Bestuchef, however, was
only of brief duration. He soon reasserted
himself as the power behind the throne, an
autocrat whose motto was " Russia for the
Russians," with its corollary that the proper
place for Germans was Germany. He could
not, of course, send Peter back to Holstein-
Gottorp, or dismiss Catherine to Anhalt-Zerbst ;
but he could, at least, hurry Catherine's mother
home, get rid of the Germans in her suite, forbid
both her and Peter to communicate with Ger-
many, and surround them with creatures of his
own, commissioned to spy upon their actions and
report to him.

That was his policy, and he was ruthless
and thorough in the execution of it. One by one,

21

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

all the foreigners attached, in whatever capacity,
to the grand-ducal household were dismissed ;
and all persons, whether strangers or natives,
supposed to be sympathetic to them were
eliminated from their entourage — some of them
even finding their way, on one pretext or another,
to prison or to exile. Nor was that all. It
was further intiniated to Catherine that she
must not correspond with her German relatives
— not even with her mother. All her letters
home were to be composed for her at the Foreign
Office by Bestuchef's clerks, and she was to do
nothing but append her signature. Only by
treating her as a child, Bestuchef thought, was
it possible to make her a good Russian.

Peter, it appears, was hardly, if at all,
perturbed. He had his own interests : his dogs,
his horses, his mistresses, his toys, his games of
soldiers ; and with these recreations there was
no attempt to interfere. He also liked to get
drunk, and had ample opportunities of doing
so. Deeply attached to his vices, he was in-
different to the nationality of his boon com-
panions, as is the way of those whose senses
are blunted by strong drink. Catherine, on the
other hand, felt the cruelty alike of her enforced
isolation and of the enforced companionship
of chaperons whom she could not trust, and
with whose language even she was as yet imper-
fectly acquainted. She had come to Russia,
doubtless, with the Western view of Russians :
as incapable of distinguishing an individual
22

MARRIAGE

Russian, different from other Russians, as the
average European is of recognising that any indi-
vidual Chinaman differs from other Chinamen.
She was to learn to do so — she was already
learning ; but the process of education was
painful. Her position, in truth, was very much
like that of a girl sent to a foreign boarding
school, falling into disgrace for reasons which
are not explained to her, eyed with obtrusive
suspicion, and never able to escape from the
prying gaze of governesses.

Her life, as she depicts it for us in her Memoirs,
was inexpressibly tedious : nothing but a weary
round of journeys from palace to palace ; of
interminable devotional exercises at the devo-
tional seasons ; of monotonous Court functions
and card-parties. All this, year in year out,
for many years, without any of those oppor-
tunities of gay abandon which are the privilege
of the irresponsible, without a companion who
spoke her own language or had a soul above
the routine of rites and ceremonies, and also
without — ior very nearly without — the occa-
sional relief of privacy. All this, moreover, in
the company of such a husband as Peter was
now proving himself to be.

How Peter impressed his child- wife before
marriage we have already seen. How he dis-
gusted her afterwards innumerable passages in
the Memoirs demonstrate. The memory of his
unpleasant habits clung to Catherine and sick-
ened her for years. She portrays him as at

23

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

once a fool and a boisterous buffoon. His least
objectionable recreation was to lie in bed and play
with toys. He also compelled his wife to play
cards with hiiji for hours at a time, sulked when
he lost, but insisted that the money should be
instantly handed over when he won. At other
times he diverted himself by pacing Catherine's
boudoir, cracking a whip at the servants. But
the most offensive of all his offences consisted
in keeping a pack of hounds in the room adjoin-
ing the bridal chamber, so that the noise of
their yapping was always in Catherine's ears,
and their stench always in her nostrils. She
returns to the subject several times, this being
her first reference to it —

" The Grand Duke got his pack together
while we were in the country, and set to work
to train the hounds himself. When he was
tired of teasing them, he scraped on a fiddle for
a change. He did not know a note of music,
but he had a fairly good ear, and supposed
that the charm of music consisted solely in the
violence with which the instrument was handled.
Those who heard him would gladly have stopped
their ears with cotton- wool if they had dared.
. . . This mode of life was continuous alike in
the country and in town."

And then, on a subsequent page —

" Our principal nuisance, morning, noon, and
nearly all night, was as follows. The Grand
24

MARRIAGE

Duke trained his hounds with remarkable
perseverance, lashing at them with his whip,
yelling at them after the manner of huntsmen,
and chasing them from one of his two rooms to
the other. Those of the hounds that got tired,
and tried to desist from the game, were pitilessly
whipped, and so yelled and howled louder than
ever. When he wearied of this amusement,
which was an unconscionable nuisance to the
ears and tranquillity of those about him, he
used to take a fiddle and scrape it, very loudly
and very much out of tune, walking up and down
the room the while — returning ultimately to
the training of his hounds, thrashing them
in the most cruel style. . . . Once, hearing a
poor hound yelling horrible, I opened the door
of my room, which adjoined that in which these
proceedings were taking place, and pleaded
for the poor beast ; but that only caused the
blows to be rained with redoubled vigour. Un-
able to bear the cruel sight, I withdrew to
my bedroom, crying ; but my tears, instead
of moving the Grand Duke to pity, only made
him more angry. Pity was an emotion for
which there was no room in his soul."

Even in the annals of the most discordant
royal marriages one would not easily discover
a parallel to that picture. One cannot help
feeling for Catherine as much pity as she felt
for the hounds ; and if the stock objection should
be taken to it that one story is good until another

26

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

is told, one can confirm the general impression,
if not all the details, from other sources. It
was at about this time that Peter was assigned
a tutor to help him to mend his manners ; and
the tutor's memorandum of instructions, which
has been preserved, specifies the various par-
ticulars in which his manners require amend!-
ment. His Imperial Highness, the memor-
andum sets forth, must be taught not to make
ugly faces at people, not to hold indecorous
conversations with his inferiors, and not to
empty his wine-glass over the heads of the foot-
men who wait at table. One infers from that
sober document as readily as from Catherine's
more vivacious reminiscences the sort of un-
mannerly lout that Peter was ; and one can
sympathise with Catherine's feelings when she
too was given a monitress, commissioned to
exhort her to " be more tolerant of her husband's
tastes ; to make herself more agreeable to him ;
to display affection and even passion; and, in
short, to employ all means in her power to win
his tender regard, and accomplish her conjugal
duty."

The exhortation was obviously evoked by
Catherine's failure, after the lapse of what
seemed a reasonable time, to give the throne
an heir ; and measures were, in fact, taken
to determine whether it was she who was sterile
or her husband who was incapable of paternity.
The order arrived one day — conveyed curiously
enough by a lady-in-waiting — that the Empress
26

MARRIAGE

desired the Grand Duke to take a bath. Peter
objected. He had never had a bath in his
life, he said, and he did not mean to have one
now. He was quite sure that a bath would
be bad for his health ; it might even be fatal ;
iat any rate, he proposed to run no risks; The
lady-in-waiting insisted, declaring that, if he
did not have a bath, the Empress would cause
him to be imprisoned in a fortress ; but Peter
burst into tears of rage, declaring that he would
show the Empress that he was not a baby, and
must not be treated like one ; and Catherine,
in whose presence the scene occurred, continues,
explaining the significance of the order —

" At last she left us, announcing that she
would report the conversation verbatim to Her
Majesty. I don't know what she made of it,
but presently she came back, and changed her
tone, saying that the Empress was very angry
that we had no children, and that she proposed
to solve the mystery with the help of a doctor
and a midwife."

Evidently, therefore, Peter had some reason
to expect that the doctor would visit him in
the bath, and had refused to repair to it chiefly
for that reason. His obstinacy prevailed, and
the mystery remained unsolved. Very likely
there was no mystery at all, and no explana-
tion other than mutual incompatibility. "If,"
Catherine writes, " the Grand Duke had desired

27

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

me to love him, I could have done so, for it
was my natural inclination to obey duties of
that kind" — a profession which one has no
difficulty in beUeving. But the Grand Duke
had not desired it. On the contrary, he had
preferred to regale his wife with talk about
the superior charms of other wonien. There
is no need to give a list of them ; but no less
than seven are enumerated by the biographers,
and one story may be cited as typical of all —

" The Grand Duke," says Catherine, " was
very much attracted, especially when he had
drunk too much, as he did every day of his life,
by the Princess of Courland. He never quitted
her side ; he never spoke to any one but her.
In short, his preference for her was so notorious
as to shock my vanity at the thought that such
a hideous little monster was my successful
rival. One day, when I rose from the dinner-
table, Mme Vladislava told me that every one
was distressed to see this hunchback preferred
to me. ' What am I to do ? ' I replied ;
and I went to bed in tears. Hardly had I got
to sleep when the Grand Duke came to bed too.
Being drunk, and not knowing what he was
doing, he proceeded to entertain me with talk
about the superlative attractions of his mistress.
I pretended to be fast asleep, hoping thus to
induce him to keep quiet. He only spoke
the louder, in order to wake me up; and when
I showed no sign of waking, he banged me
28

MARRIAGE

in tjie ribs with his fists, grumbled at me for
sleeping so soundly, and then turned round
and began to snore."

That no family was born to parents so
disposed towards each other is no matter for
extreme astonishment. Perhaps the Empress
presently realised as much ; and that may be
the significance of Catherine's statement that
" nothing more was said about requiring the
Grand Duke to take a bath." A letter from
Peter to Catherine, printed as an appendix
to the Russian translation of the Memoirs, in
which, as early as 1746, he excuses himself
from sharing her apartment on the ground that
" the bed is too narrow," may also be regarded
as pointing to that conclusion. Husband and
wife evidently ceased very soon after their
union to live on conjugal terms ; so we may
leave that branch of the subject, and consider
the question of Catherine's own deportment.

Her monitress — Mme Choglokof — was not
appointed solely for the purpose of exhort-
ing her to be more affectionate to Peter. The
memorandum of instructions also represented
that Catherine neglected her religious duties,
tried to interfere with public affairs, and was
unduly familiar in her manner with the officers
attached to the Court. Seeing that she was
only seventeen, her interference with the affairs
of State cannot have amounted to a great
deal ; but she was not, of course, at that age,

29

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

too young to flirt. Our question is : Was there
any case against her ?

If we could beheve Laveaux, we should have
to say that there was not one case only, but a
long list of cases. Laveaux draws a picture
of Catherine and one of her attendant ladies
leaning out of the Palace window together,
and becoming comprehensively amorous of an
entire regiment of Life Guardsmen. He tells
us that Catherine and this same maid-of-honour
sallied from the Palace night after night, in
disguise, and kept appointments with lovers
to whom they never revealed their identity.
He further revives the story of the mysterious

Count B , already introduced by him as

Catherine's lover at Stettin. Count B , he

says, followed. Catherine to St. Petersburg, was
caught by Peter trying to force the door of
her apartment, and was arrested and banished to
Siberia, without trial, by Administrative Order.

Those stories, however, are very obviously
fables, invented by a biographer who wanted
to make out a case for Peter. There is no
evidence whatever that Catherine, as yet, sought
such adventures ; and there is plenty of evidence
that she was too closely watched to have any
chance of pursuing them. All that is authentic
is that she flirted — very mildly ; that she was
caught out in her very first flirtation ; and that
she was promptly placed under very strict
supervision. It is not much of a story, but
one must tell it.
30

FLIRTATION

The hero of it was a certain Andrew Czernichef ,
a dashing young Guardsman, as enterprising
as he was dashing. It seems that he had
received some encouragement — not much, per-
haps, but still enough to encourage him. He
had admired Catherine before her marriage —
and Catherine liked admiration ; but the affair
had been noticed and nipped in the bud. Andrew
had received a friendly hint from a high quarter
to the effect that he had better fall ill and
apply for leave of absence. Otherwise

He had taken the hint without requiring the
i's to be dotted ; but now that Catherine was
safely married, he had been allowed to return
to the post of duty — and inclination — in the
Summer Palace. He was on guard there,
in the great hall, just then in the hands of
painters and decorators, on which Catherine's
room opened. For once in her life — it was a
thing which was rarely allowed to happen —
Catherine was alone. She opened the door,
looked out, and caught sight of her handsome
young admirer —

" I beckoned to him," she writes, " and
he came to the door — very nervously, I am
bound to say. I asked him if the Empress
was likely to be passing. ' I can't hear you
speak,' he said. ' There is too much noise
here. Let me come inside.' ' Certainly not,'
I replied. He was outside the door, and I was
inside ; but I was holding the door a little way

31

COMEDY OP^ CATHERINE THE GREAT

open and speaking through the aperture. Turn-
ing my head with an involuntary movement, I
saw behind me, close to the door of my dressing-
room, the Court Chamberlain, Count Divier.
' Madame,' he said, ' the Grand Duke wants
you.' "

No more — apparently — than that ; but the
Court Chamberlain was a spy and a tale-bearer.
He reported what he had seen, and Catherine
heard of the matter from her confessor. Was
it true, the priest asked her, that she had kissed
Czernichef ? " It is a calumny, my father,"
she replied. " Then you had better be careful,
my child, not to give calumny an opening,"
was the rejoinder ; but there were also penalties
to be paid. Andrew Czernichef was sent to
prison — though not for very long ; and Catherine
was given a chaperon — the Mme Choglokof of
whom we have spoken. She was allowed thence-
forward to go nowhere without Mme Choglokof
in attendance ; no one was admitted to her apart-
ments without leave from Mme Choglokof ; and
Mme Choglokof lectured her on etiquette from
morning to night, saying continually, " You
mustn't behave like that — the Empress wouldn't
like it."

Such were the unfortunate and unpleasant
beginnings of Catherine's married life.

32

CHAPTER IV

Tribulations of Married Life — Restrictions on Liberty — Flirta-
tions with Zachar Czernichef — Introduction of Soltikof —
Birth of an Heir

The supervision, which had been tolerably
strict from the first, became stricter than ever
after the installation of Mme Choglokof as
chaperon ; and it applied to Peter as well
as Catherine. They lived in a gilded cage —
none too brilliantly gilded — enjoying less liberty
than is, as a rule, allowed to school-children, and
no more scope for the play of their individualities
than if they had been fowls in a poultry-run.
That, at all events, was the theory ; and, for
some time, it was the practice also. It was
to relieve the consequent tedium that Peter
established his pack of hounds in the apartment
adjoining his wife's bedroom. We know already
what Catherine thought of that ; and she has
left us a graphic picture of the ways in which
Peter bored her when he was not occupied
either with his hounds or with his fiddle —

" The Grand Duke," she writes, " never

entered my room except for the purpose of

pacing up and down it, talking to me of matters

c 33

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

which, no doubt, interested him, but had no
interest whatever for me. He used to do
this for hours at a time, and several times a day.
I had to pace the room with him until I sank
from exhaustion. I had to listen to him atten-
tively and reply to him, though he generally
talked the most insufferable nonsense."

He had some wild idea, it seemed, of building
himself a pleasure-house, on the lines of a con-
vent,— a sort of Thelema, as it were, — at Oranien-
baum. All the inmates were to wear the Capucin
habit, bring their own provisions, and draw their
own water from the well. The notion was no
passing fancy, but a fixed idea on which he en-
larged daily, for a whole winter, in the style of
a child planning an excursion to a desert island.
" It bored me to extinction," Catherine says.
"I never knew anything so stupid. When he
left me, it was a delightful relief to turn even to
the most tedious book."

Such was the daily round ; and if we are to
understand Catherine, and do her justice, we
must realise it. She had intelligence, character,
vivacity ; she was at the age at which the joy
of life is keen. Though she was only in her
teens, she was far cleverer than any one in
the circle fixed about her ; and she was not
allowed to have a word to say in the choice
of her companions. Her feelings must have
been pretty much what those of an under-
graduate would be if he were sent back to a
34

TRIBULATIONS OF MAKRIED LIFE

dame school and never allowed out of sight of
the governesses. We need not credit her with
any consciousness of genius, or any expecta-
tions of the coming glories ; but we may feel
quite sure that she resented the treatment —
felt herself misunderstood and " put upon " —
and looked forward to diverting herself when
the hour sounded for her emancipation.

And her emancipation, of course, though
it might be delayed, was bound to come, and
came. No sudden, or revolutionary, transition
brought it ; but it arrived by degrees, through
the mere efflux of time. A prisoner may be
kept in prison for ever ; but a princessT— espe-
cially if she be a princess of charm, character,
and intelligence — cannot be confined for ever
in a gilded cage. She grows up and asserts
herself ; she pushes against the barriers, and
they yield, little by little, until they give way
altogether. The vigilance of guardians relaxes ;
and the Palace becomes less and less like a
glorified poultry-run.

It was so in this case. The discipline which
was possible when Catherine was in her teens
was no longer possible when she was in the
twenties. Her settled destiny, after all, was
to be the consort of an Emperor of Russia.
Other people besides herself — the guardians
in charge of her among the rest — realised that ;
and the knowledge influenced their behaviour.
It must have influenced them the more because
of their perception that Catherine had a force

35

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

of character which would have to be reckoned
with whenever she attained to a position of
independent initiative ; and her charm must
also have counted, making friends for her
who resented her treatment on her behalf,
and might some day have the power of making
things disagreeable for her enemies. She was
not only fascinating to men, but gracious and
friendly to women — sympathetic alike to both
equals and inferiors. So, though we can
lay our fingers on no definite incident, we
find that, as the time passed, she gradually
acquired more freedom of movement and a
larger circle of acquaintances.

That end was gained chiefly by the concilia-
tion of her chaperon. Mme Choglokof had a
husband who betrayed the trust reposed in him
by making love to Catherine ; and Catherine
rejected his advances. She says that she did
so less from elevated principles than because he
was ugly and stupid ; but it is not impossible
that tact and prudence were also considera-
tions which weighed with her. At all events,
she behaved with tact, earning Mme Choglo-
kof's gratitude by the propriety of her conduct,
while, at the same time, keeping M. Choglokof
in a good temper by not leaving him entirely
without hope. The result was that husband
and wife agreed to strain points in order to
make things more pleasant for her, with the
result that presently opportunities for flirtation
once more presented themselves.
36

FLIRTATION

The next flirtation was with Zachar Czerni-
chef, a brother of the Andrew Czernichef whom
we have seen detected conversing with Catherine
through her half-opened bedroom door. Zachar,
like Andrew, was a dashing young Guardsman,
whose duty brought him to the Palace. He
" made the running " quickly by telling Catherine
that she was beautiful. " It was the first
time," she writes, " that anyone had paid me
such a compliment. I rather liked it, and,
what is more,. I believed it." After that,
they corresponded by means of " devises," —
rhymes and mottoes, that is to say, such as
are incorporated, nowadays, in Christmas
crackers, — Princess Gargarin playing the part
of postman. This interchange of sentimental
couplets was succeeded by an interchange of
sentimental letters ; and presently, at a masked
ball, the dashing young Guardsman got his
chance of making a whispered declaration.

He had much to say, he whispered, that
he dared not put on paper. Might he not come
to Catherine's room, for a moment, in order to
say it ?

" I told him it was quite impossible — that
no one could enter my rooms, any more than
I could leave them, unobserved. He offered
to disguise himself, if necessary, as a domestic
servant ; but I refused, point blank, to let him
do anything of the kind, and we got no further
than this exchange of complimentary mottoes."

37

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

We have only her word for that, of course ;
but we need not be cynically sceptical. Though
some letters have been published which lend
themselves to a different interpretation, the
story reminds us of nothing so much as a school-
girl's first experiment with the grand passion
over the garden wall, though Catherine was,
in fact, two-and-twenty at the time. Things
were not to happen quite so innocently when
Sergius Soltikof came upon the scene.

Catherine owed her acquaintance to Sergius
Soltikof to the complaisance of her chaperon.
She constantly, at that time, sat in Mme
Choglokof's apartments instead of her own ;
and Mme Choglokof " received." Among other
guests she received Sergius and his friend
Leon Narishkin — the latter famous for his wit,
and the former for his handsome presence.
Knowing her own husband's propensities and
inclinations, she may be supposed to have had
her own reasons for wishing to introduce Cather-
ine to the society of other men ; and Sergius,
whom Catherine writes of as " beau comme
le jour," showed himself a consummate tactician
in dealing with his rivals.

He persuaded M. Choglokof that he was a
poet ; and whenever he wanted to get rid of
him, he sent him into the corner by the stove,
to write a song. He also persuaded Leon
Narishkin that he was a musician, and induced
him to compose airs for Choglokof's songs, and
try them over with him. " By those means,"
38

SOLTIKOF

Catherine explains, " we were enabled to con-
verse without embarrassment ; " and the con-
versation soon took the course which might
have been expected. Sergius, that is to say,
unmasked his batteries ; and Catherine threw
up defences — of a sort —

" ' How about your wife ? ' I said to him.
* You married her only two years ago. It
was a love match. We all know that you are
still in love with her, and that she loves you
to distraction. What will she have to say
about this ? ' He replied by assuring me that
all was not gold that glittered, and that he
was now paying a heavy price for a momentary
blindness."

And Catherine — so she says — pitied him,
but nevertheless withstood him — " all through
the Spring, and for part of the Summer " — in
spite of the fact that she met him nearly every
day. She tried — so she relates — to check his
ardour by the remark : " For anything that you
can tell, my heart may already be Another's."
She was surprised — so she would have us believe
— to discover that the challenge increased his
ardour instead of diminishing it ; and then
there came a crisis, of which the Memoirs give
a graphic description.

The scene was an island on the Neva belong-
ing to Choglokof, where a hunting party was
assembled. Sergius contrived that he and

39

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

Catherine should be alone together while the
others were pursuing the hares, and seized the
opportunity to plead his suit again —

" I did not reply, and he took advantage of
my silence to go on speaking of his passionate
attachment, and begged me to let him hope
that he might not be quite indifferent to me.
I told him I could not possibly prevent him
from indulging any dreams he liked. Then he
compared himself with the other men attached
to the Court, and made me admit that I pre-
ferred him to them, and drew his inferences. I
laughed ; but I am bound to admit that I liked
him. After our conversation had lasted about
an hour and a half I told him he must go, as
so long an interview would be likely to arouse
suspicions. He refused to go unless I told him
that I found his society agreeable. ' Yes, yes,'
I said, ' but make haste and go.' ' You've said
it,' he replied, as he galloped off. ' No, no,' I
called after him. ' Yes, yes,' he repeated ; and
so we parted."

They met again at supper, however, being
detained on the island by a change in the
weather. It was Sergius's opportunity to say
that the heavens favoured his suit, seeing that
the storm had vouchsafed him a few more hours
of Catherine's company ; and Catherine declares
that she, on her part, was very displeased with
herself. " I had thought," she says, " that I
40

SOLTIKOF

should be able to calm and control both his
hot head and mine ; but now I realised
that this would be difficult, if not impos-
sible."

The atmosphere there is very different from
that of the flirtation with Andrew Czernichef
through the half-opened door, and more charged
with passion even than the atmosphere in which
sentimental " devises " had been exchanged
with Andrew Czernichef s brother. Catherine
appears in the story triumphant at last over
the Westerner's difficulty in distinguishing one
Russian from another. Years and experience
were telling — she was a grown woman, and
serious. Her heart fluttered when she perceived
an apparent breach in the continuity of Sergius
Soltikof's attentions ; whereas the disappear-
ance of her previous admirers seems to have
troubled her but little. And the affair de-
veloped in a manner which surprised her, and
she found it smiled upon from an unexpected
quarter.

" Listen," said her chaperon one day. " I
have something very serious to say to you ; "
and this " something " was to the effect that
there were exceptions to all rules — even to the
rule that Grand Duchesses should be circumspect
in their conduct and faithful to Grand Dukes.
The Memoirs continue —

" ' I love my country,' she said, ' and I am
in earnest in what I say, as you will soon dis-

41

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

cover. You are in love. It must be either
Sergius Soltikof or Leon Narishkin. If I am
not mistaken, it is the latter.' ' No, no, it isn't,'
I exclaimed. 'No matter,' she rejoined; 'if
it isn't one of them, it is the other.' To that I
made no answer, and she continued : ' Very
well. You will see that I, at any rate, shall
throw no difficulties in your way.' I pretended
not to understand, and she scolded me several
times, both in town and in the country, whither
we repaired after Easter."

In reality, however, Catherine understood
quite well ; and, indeed, the hint was much too
broad for its significance to be missed. An heir
was wanted. The Grand Duke would be the
putative father of any heir born to Catherine.
It was better that he should be the actual
father too ; but, if that could not be, then the
point could be waived, and those concerned
could agree to make believe. That was what
Mme Choglokof meant ; and it is not to be
supposed that the idea originated with her, or
that she threw out the suggestion on her own
sole responsibility. It was a suggestion, at any
rate, to which Catherine yielded; and on 20th
September 1754 she gave birth to a boy.

It cannot actually be proved, of course,
either that Soltikof was, or that Peter was not,
the father of this child ; and there is even a
further element of mystery. The child was
taken away from its mother by the Empress's
42

THE HEIR

orders, and was not returned to her until after
an interval of about six weeks. It is not certain
that the child brought back was identical with
the child which had been taken away. The
belief was current — one encounters it even in
the dispatches of ambassadors — that the Empress
herself became a mother at this date, and that
her infant was secretly substituted for Catherine's.
The manner of the Empress's life was certainly
such as to lend colour to the hypothesis,
though her age — she was then forty-five — makes
it improbable. It is necessary to note the
rumour before proceeding to draw inferences
from the treatment subsequently meted out to
Catherine and her lover.

It is treatment which certainly suggests
that the authorities had connived at an ir-
regularity, but now wished to prevent its con-
tinuance after it had served its purpose, and
even, so far as might be possible, to cover up
all traces of it. Sergius Soltikof was entrusted
with honourable but unimportant missions to
foreign countries — first in Sweden and after-
wards at Hamburg — and so kept out of the
way ; and though Catherine was presented
with roubles and jewellery as tokens of the
Empress's favour, the personality of her Court
was once more changed — for fear, presumably,
lest her attendants, having acquired a taste
for intrigue, might indulge it by conniving
at irregularities which the authorities did not
desire.

43

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

Once more, therefore, she was relegated to
a Hfe of isolation — separated not only from
Sergius Soltikof, who consoled himself elsewhere,
but also from Mme Choglokof, who, from being
her argus, had become her confidante, and from
Princess Gargarin, who had made herself so
useful in the carrying of love-letters. The
society of Peter was, of course, no consolation
for the loss ; for she tells us, in this part of her
narrative, that he smelt horribly of wine and
tobacco ; that the noise in his apartment, which
adjoined hers, was like the racket in a guard-
room ; that he got disgustingly drunk on the day
of her confinement ; and that he, shortly after-
wards, picked a quarrel with her and went so
far as to threaten her with his sword. But she
had grown up. She was now twenty-five, and
she had tasted liberty. Whatever irksome
restrictions might be placed around her, it was
no longer possible to treat her quite as a child.
Unless she were actually imprisoned — which no
party proposed — she was bound to find oppor-
tunities of emancipation.

How she found them — and how she availed
herself of them — is what we have now to see;
but we must first do her the justice of noting
that her original divagation from the straight
path was not spontaneous but suggested — that
temptation was deliberately thrown in her way,
and that she did not yield to it until those under
whose tutelage she was placed pressed her to
do so.
44

CHAPTER V

Removal of Restrictions — Liaison with Poniatowski — The
Intrigues of Bestuchef

The Court at which Catherine was seeking, and
obtaining, emancipation was an emancipated
Court, with an emancipated Empress at the head
of it. One may help oneself to form some
notion of its tone by recalling that one of
Elizabeth's favourite diversions was to arrange
dances at which the men were required to wear
skirts and the women to wear breeches ; ^ her
idea being that she herself looked well in breeches,
whereas other women looked ridiculous in them.
It may be argued that such gaieties are, in them-
selves, innocent and harmless ; but the fact
remains that they do not often, in practice,
occur in conjunction with Puritanical standards
of morality.

Nor did they in this instance. It has al-
ready been said that Elizabeth was frivolous ;
and it may be added that her levity was notori-
ous even in the age of Louis xv. She had
" favourites " ; and, as she did not make a

^ At another Court entertainment all the women were re-
quired to appear in wigs with shaven heads.

45

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

point of confining her favours to a single
favourite, it hardly matters, so far as religion
and morality are concerned, whether she was
or was not secretly married to one of them. It
has been written that the privileged men who
shared her favours regarded themselves " not as
rivals but as colleagues " ; and it is also recorded
that she and her favourites used to get drunk to-
gether. One of Peter's offensive eccentricities,
indeed, consisted in boring peep-holes through
the wall of her apartment in order that he and
his boon companions might pry upon her at
her hours of ease and inebriety ; and public
opinion agreed in regarding it as more im-
portant that the Grand Duke should behave
like a gentleman than that the Empress should
keep sober.

And she did not keep sober, but became
a more and more graceless creature as middle
age approached. She was good-natured and
soft-hearted ; but circumstances had been too
much for her, and now her ruling passion was
terror. Remembering the palace revolution
which had raised her to power, she lived in dread
of being dethroned in her turn and receiving the
treatment which had been meted out to others
in her name. Visions of the dagger, the bowl,
the rope, and the dungeon haunted her in the
midst of her most ostentatious pleasures. Drink,
prayer, and cards were the various anodynes
with which she sought to calm her fears. She
spent hours on her knees, and then other hours
46

GREATER FREEDOM

at the gaming-table, not getting to bed until
five o'clock in the morning. She used several
bedrooms, so that no assassin might know where
she meant to sleep on any given night, ^ and often
contented herself with lying down for a few hours
on a couch. She distrusted her favourites and
yet clung to them.

High moral principles, it is clear, could not
flourish in that atmosphere. The Empress was
always ready to sacrifice her highest principles
to any reasons of state; and her courtiers and
ministers followed her example, if they did
not anticipate it. We have seen them doing
so in the case of the Soltikof affair, and we
shall see them doing so again. Bestuchef,
the Chancellor, certainly did not allow moral
scruples to shackle him when higher interests
were at stake. There is excellent reason to
believe that Soltikof received from him a hint
very similar to that which Catherine received
from Mme Choglokof ; and when Soltikof
had acted on the hint, and been discreetly
removed from a Court at which his presence
was no longer desired, Bestuchef adopted an
attitude of politic indulgence towards Catherine.
Like other people, he looked forward, and fore-
saw a time when it might be better to have her
for a friend than for an enemy. He also under-
stood that, while it might now be difficult to
obstruct her in the path of pleasure, it might

1 This habit is noted by the ambassadors quite in the early
years of her reign.

47

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

be possible, and profitable, to guide her in it.
Young women, in short, would be young
women, and there was no particular reason
why they should not be if their husbands were
unfaithful, as Peter notoriously was ; but, in
the case of such a young woman as Catherine,
it was important that her heart should be occu-
pied by the right young man.

So, if we may judge by his conduct,
Bestuchef argued. The time was coming when
he would want Catherine for a partner in
political intrigue ; and the personality of her
lover would then be a factor of consequence.
If his own nominee were accepted for the post,
a great point would have been gained. Just
as it had suited him to accord a temporary
support to Sergius Soltikof, so now it suited
him to put forward Stanislas Poniatowski —
and not only to put him forward, but even,
when Poniatowski hesitated, to slap him on the
back and push him forward.

Poniatowski was the son of a Lithuanian
domestic servant who had attained to pre-
ferment by treachery and been given the hand
of Princess Czartoryski as a portion of his re-
ward. He was at this time — we are in 1755 — a
youth of two-and-twenty who had " knocked
about " in Paris and in London and shown some
address in the art of making friends. In the
former city he had been rescued from imprison-
ment for debt by Mme Geoffrin ; in the
48

PONIATOWSKI

latter he had won the confidence of Horace
Walpole's friend, Charles Hanbury Williams,
spoken of by Dr. Johnson as " our lively and
elegant, though too licentious, lyric bard " ; and
Williams, being now appointed to succeed Guy
Dickens as British Ambassador at the Russian
Court, proposed to take the young Pole with
him in some nondescript unofficial capacity.

That is how he and Catherine came to meet ;
and they met in circumstances which made it
easy for their relations to become confidential.
Bestuchef wished them to do so, and Williams
wished it also. We need not try to follow all the
currents and cross-currents of the diplomacy
of the time ; but the essential fact is that
Williams discovered Catherine as a potential
force in politics. He had found the Empress
amiable but impracticable — always ready to
dance wdth him, but never ready to negotiate.
He had found Peter hopeless — drunk, stupid,
prejudiced, and inaccessible to new ideas. On
the other hand, a conversation with Catherine
at a supper-party satisfied him that she was
no ordinary puppet princess, but a woman of
intelligence, with a future — and also with weak
points, by playing on which an intelligent envoy
might make her useful.

As a matter of fact, Williams did not succeed
in making her quite as useful as he had hoped.
Those cross-currents of which we have spoken
interfered with the course which he proposed to
steer. Though Catherine's hour was coming, it
D 49

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

had not yet come. She had Bestuchef on her
side ; but there was a tug-of-war proceeding
behind the scenes between Bestuchef and the
Schouvalofs/ and the victory was to rest with
the latter. Hence the check which WiUiams's
diplomacy in the end encountered. Still, he
began his game well, though he did not finish
it successfully. He discovered that Catherine's
assailable points were her need for money and
her passion for romance. He lent her money
(receipts for about fifty thousand roubles of
British Secret Service money have been pre-
served) ; ^ and though he shrank from the
adventurous course of making love to her in
person, he contrived, with Bestuchef 's connivance,
that Poniatowski should do so on his behalf.

There was another candidate — a certain
Count Lehadrof. He and Poniatowski were put
forward on the same evening in a competition
which one may almost describe as a beauty
show, with the members of the Court for
spectators and Catherine herself for judge.
" I prefer the Pole," she replied to those who
questioned her ; and it only remained to tell
Poniatowski what she had said, and persuade
him to take advantage of her preference.

That task was entrusted to Narishkin, — the
same Narishkin to whom we have just seen

1 One of the Schouvalofs was the favourite of the Empress
Elizabeth.

2 A proposal to repay the money (which the British Govern-
ment did not wish to accept) was the subject of some diplomatic
correspondence after her accession to the throne.

50

PONTATOWSKI

Soltikof preferred, — an amiable buffoon who
hung about the Court and made himself gener-
ally useful. It was not an easy task, for
Poniatowski was timorous. He feared the fate
of other lovers of Russian princesses who, it
was whispered, had been favoured for a season
and had then ceased to please, and been relegated
— their mission accomplished — to the deepest
dungeon of a frowning fortress or the remotest
village of the frozen north. Such things had
certainly sometimes happened as the tragic
sequels of amours in Russian palaces ; and no
one can say that Poniatowski' s apprehension
was unnatural. Narishkin, however, persevered
with him, and Catherine herself paid Him a
significant compliment; and so, to quote his
Memoirs —

" At last I screwed up my courage and
ventured to write her a note. Narishkin
brought me her answer the next day, and
then I forgot all about Siberia. A few days
later he took me to see her."

Then follows his vivid description of her
charm.s —

" She was twenty-five, and had lately re-
covered from her first confinement and reached
the moment at which beautiful women are at
the height of their beauty. She had black hair,
a dazzlingly fair skin, a brilliant complexion,

51

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

large, eloquent blue eyes, long black eyelashes,
a Grecian nose, a mouth that seemed made for
kissing, a trim waist, not too small, an active
and yet dignifiejd carriage, a soft and pleasant
voice, and a laugh as merry as her disposition.
Her manner was very caressing. She was quick
at discovering every one's weak point ; and
she was then paving her way, by winning the
affection of her people, to the throne which she
afterwards occupied so gloriously. Such was
the mistress who became the arbitress of my
destiny. My whole life was devoted to her —
far more so than is usually the case with lovers."

There are other touches : that the painful
circumstances of Catherine's married life had
driven her to books for consolation ; that she
was as much at her ease in abstruse mathematical
calculations as in the give-and-take of playful
repartee. It is the portrait of a lover who was
indeed in love, and who laid an innocent and
unsophisticated heart at her feet ; and it is also
the first lifelike and convincing portrait which
we possess. Catherine herself, in her own
narrative, hardly reveals herself an individual ;
but her lover does reveal her. Now that he
has spoken, we have no longer to make what
we can of anecdotes clustering round an illustrious
name, but can perceive the real charms of a
real woman, and divine her energy and ambition.
Politically, Poniatowski was little more than a
child in her hands ; but he was a child who
52

PONIATOWSKI

understood. He felt Catherine's potential as
well as her actual significance ; and there are
many little touches in his story which, though
they throw no light on the wire-pulling and
secret diplomacy of the time, enable us to
picture his mistress's position, and the tone
which those about her took towards her amours.

She had outgrown tutelage, but she was
suspected and spied upon by one party while
the other intrigued with her. She could at last
live pretty much as she liked, provided that she
indulged her fancies with discretion, paid virtue
the homage of a decent hypocrisy, and did
not give her amours too obvious a political
complexion. There was no real mystery about
her relations with Poniatowski, but a certain
pretence of mystery had to be kept up. He was
smuggled to her apartments, and sometimes
concealed in them when she received other
visitors. She sallied from the Palace in disguise
to keep appointments with him in the houses
of persons in her confidence. If everybody did
not know all about it, anybody might easily
have done so ; but nobody minded — not even
her mother-in-law — not even her husband.

Peter's attitude in the matter, indeed, is the
subject of a queerly characteristic story, which
is related by too many independent witnesses to
be disbelieved. One of his officers, it seems,
caught the lover prowling about the Palace in
disguise, refused to accept his explanation that
he was a tailor going about his sartorial business,

53

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

took him by the scruff of the neck, and dragged
him into the Grand Duke's presence. The en-
suing conversation is thus reported by the French
Ambassador, M. de I'Hopital : —

" I know all about your relations with the
Grand Duchess," said the Grand Duke, " and I
suspect that you also have designs against myself.
I see you a^re carrying pistols." " What an ex-
traordinary suspicion ! " " What ! Your only
object is to see the Grand Duchess ? Very
well, friend Poniatowski ! Go and have supper
with her ! I too have a mistress, as you know."

Poniatowski himself, relating the same
incident, says that the Grand Duke actually
fetched the Grand Duchess from her bed, and
brought her to him, without giving her time
even to put on her stockings ; and he goes on —

" I often used to go to see them at Oranien-
baum. I used to arrive in the evening, and find
my way to the Grand Duchess's apartment by
a back staircase. There I used to meet the
Grand Duke and his mistress. We used all to
have supper together, and, after supper, the
Grand Duke used to retire with his mistress,
saying, ' There you are, my children. You
don't want to see any more of me ; ' and I was
free to stay as late as I liked."

Such was life ; and we cannot get the per-
spective right, and do justice to Catherine,
54

PONIATOWSKI

unless we realise that life was such — that she
was no freak of frivolity, but was only living as
every one expected her to live. It occurred to
no one that a Grand Duchess, neglected by her
husband and admired by other men, would
chastely repel all ardent advances. The British
Ambassador was of one mind in that matter with
the Russian Chancellor. He encouraged Catherine
by assuring her that, if she were firm, and let it
be clearly understood that she would regard an
affront to the man whom she favoured as an
affront to herself, she would find that she was
allowed to live her own life without interference.
He also arranged — or allowed it to be arranged
— that she and her lover should meet for their
first interviews at the house of the British Consul ;
and Bestuchef simultaneously contrived to es-
tablish Poniatowski's position on a securer basis
by inviting his nomination as the diplomatic
representative of Poland.

The love affair, in short, was a move in a
great political game. The object of English
policy was to save Frederick the Great from
destruction by the allied forces of France,
Austria, Saxony, and Russia ; and British gold
was being poured out freely to that end. Cather-
ine wanted money ; Bestuchef wanted money ;
all sorts of people wanted money. Williams's
dispatches are full of reports of their require-
ments. He asks that Bestuchef, whose stipend
is only 7000 roubles, shall be promised a British
pension of £2500 a year. He announces that

55

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

Funk, the Saxon Ambassador, not having received
any stipend recently from his own Government,
is willing to sell his influence for a pension of
500 ducats, and that Bestuchef's private secre-
tary can be bought for a pension of 250 ducats
— and so forth.

Bestuchef, at the same time, was playing
a game of his own as well as the game of the
British Ambassador. He recognised Catherine
as the rising sun, and wished to stand well
with her in view of contingencies. He knew
that Peter was in bad odour with the Empress,
whose pleasures he had spied upon, as we have
seen, through peep-holes, and whose devotions
he also disturbed by pacing the chapel with
clanking military accoutrements and talking at
the top of his voice when she engaged in prayer.
He further knew — what was obvious to all the
world — that Peter preferred his mistress, Eliza-
beth Vorontsof, the ugly sister of the Vice-
Chancellor of the Empire, to his wife ; and
that the bad feeling in that quarter was fraught
with exciting possibilities.

It was possible that Peter would wish to
repudiate Catherine and her child — which might
not even be hers. It was also possible that
the Empress, whose health was visibly declining,
would name the child as her heir insteiad of
Peter, and that Catherine would be the Regent
during the child's minority. The time was
visibly approaching when men in prominent
positions would have to take sides; and he
56

PONIATOWSKI

divined that Catherine's side would be the
best to take — especially as she did not like
the Schouvalofs, and the Schouvalofs did not
like him, but were intriguing for his overthrow.
So he who had once forbidden her to corre-
spond with her own mother except through
the medium of the Foreign Office now not
only smiled upon her love affairs, but engaged
in mysterious and underhand negotiations with
her. She writes of herself, at this period,
as deciding to take an " independent course " ;
and the French Ambassador reports her as
figuring at the head of a cabal.

There were, in fact, two cabals manoeuvring
at the Court at the time : the Anglo-Prussian
cabal, represented in St. Petersburg by Cather-
ine and Bestuchef ; and the Franco- Austrian
cabal, associated more or less with the Schouva-
lof interest. Time was on the side of the
former ; but the latter were the stronger at
the moment. The Empress did not die as
soon as Bestuchef and Hanbury Williams ex-
pected, and consequently the Schouvalofs won
the first tricks in the game. Their first triumph
consisted in ordering Catherine's lover to return
to Poland ; ^ their second, in causing Bestuchef
to be arrested, on 26th February 1758. And,
Russia being what Russia was, the arrest of
Bestuchef implied grave danger for Catherine.

A plot was suspected. It was also suspected

^ He ultimately went, but remained some time in hiding in
St. Petersburg, seeing Catherine secretly.

57

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

that Catherine was implicated in the plot.
Bestuchef s house Avas being searched for com-
promising correspondence. If anything were
found, Catherine would assuredly be asked
for explanations, and her explanations might
not be accepted.

58

CHAPTER VI

Catherine suspected of Complicity with Bestuchef — A Scene
with the Empress — Return of Poniatowski to Poland —
Catherine's consolatory adventures

Happily for Catherine, no really compromising
documents were brought to light. She had
burnt Bestuchef's letters, and Bestuchef had
burnt hers — a reassuring note to that effect,
hastily scrawled at the last minute, was smuggled
to her. There existed only her letters to
General Aprakhsin, who was at the seat of
war, and some letters from Bestuchef to Ponia-
towski, in which her name appeared — one does
not know in what precise connection. On the
whole, therefore, the case against her was
weaker on paper than in the minds of her
accusers. It was the kind of case, in short,
which could only be pressed against a weak
antagonist — ^the kind of case to which the best
answer was the bold attitude of a courageous
personality.

Catherine realised that, and rose to the
occasion. We have seen how her personality
appeared to the man who loved her ; we may
now note how it impressed an impartial stranger.

59

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

The Chevalier d'Eon was in St. Petersburg at
about this time, and this is the character sketch
which he wrote of her —

" The Grand Duchess is romantic, ardent,
passionate. Her eyes shine, and her expression
fascinates one, hke the glassy gleam in the
eyes of a wild beast. She has a high forehead,
and, if I am not mistaken, there is the mark
on that forehead of a long and appalling future.
She is friendly and affable in her manner, but I
instinctively shrink from herwhen she approaches.
She frightens me."

That is an illuminating touch ; for a great
deal depends, at such a crisis, one may be
sure, upon the look in the eyes of the accused ;
and the look which impresses and prevails is
not the look of martyred innocence, but that
of indignant challenge. We must picture
Catherine's eyes at this juncture as the eyes
of an angry woman who would carry the war
into the enemy's camp, divide in order to
conquer, as only a beautiful woman can, and
even, if need were, throw up a window and
thrust her head out, demanding who was on
her side. Such a woman may be crushed by a
strong case, but not by a weak one ; and this
case was weak — and Catherine knew it, and
took her measures accordingly.

She was a guest, on the night of her peril,
at a bdll given in honour of Narishkin's wed-
60

BESTCJCHEFS PLOT

ding ; and she questioned the Master of the
Ceremonies as to Bestuchef's arrest, and got a
reassuring answer : " We had our orders and
obeyed them ; but as to the crime, we are
still in the dark. The investigations have not
yet produced much result." She next made
her arrangements for an interview with Ponia-
towski at the Court theatre ; and when diffi-
culties were made, asserted her rights and put
her objectors in the wrong with unexpected
energy. Her maids-of-honour would not be
allowed to accompany her ? Then she would
go without them. Her carriage would not be
available ? Then she would go on foot. And
not only that. She would appeal, over the
heads of the Schouvalof faction, to the Empress
herself. She did not believe that the Empress
knew how she was being treated ; but she would
tell her. There was her letter, and Alexander
Schouvalof himself must deliver it.

The Schouvalofs, in brief, had sown the wind
and now discovered that there was a whirlwind to
be reaped. Catherine's fury was like a tornado
sweeping all obstacles before it. Alexander
Schouvalof dared not suppress the letter ; and,
in case he might try to persuade the Empress
to ignore its appeal, another spring was pressed.
Catherine sent for her confessor, who was also
confessor to the Empress, kept him at her
bedside for an hour and a half, and charged him
to carry a message in which her political griev-
ances and her personal grievances against her

61

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

husband were inextricably mixed up. She
begged to be allowed to leave the country in
order to escape from persecution ; but, first
and foremost, she craved an audience.

Her prayer was granted, and she was
fetched from her bed to the audience at one
o'clock in the morning. The Empress, whose late
hours we have noted, received her in her dimly
lighted bedroom. Her husband and Alexander
Schouvalof were present ; and there was a
screen at the end of the room behind which
Ivan Schouvalof was hidden. On a tray on one
of the toilet tables lay a little heap of neatly
docketed letters. These were the " pieces of
conviction" — the incriminating correspondence
(if, indeed, it was incriminating) discovered by
means of perquisitions and domiciliary visits.
Catherine had been summoned to be placed on
her defence, if not actually on her trial. But
she did not wait to be interrogated. She
knelt to the Empress, and begged a favour.
She was the victim, she said, of shameful perse-
cution— might she not be sent home to her
parents ? And then —

" How can I send you home ? Remember
that you have children."

" My children are in your hands. They
could not be in better hands. I trust that you
will not forsake them."

" But how am I to explain your dismissal to
the public ? "
62

^Ae (o7fui^ee^i oA/a^^e^^ ^^^Mf^U^i

BESTUCHEF S PLOT

" Your Imperial Majesty can tell the public
the reasons for which I have fallen into disgrace
with you and have incurred the hatred of the
Grand Duke."

" And what will you live upon ? "

" I shall live as I lived before you did me
the honour of taking me from my home."

" But your mother is in exile. She has
been obliged to leave her home and settle in
Paris."

" I know it. She was thought to be too
deeply attached to Russian interests, and has
consequently been persecuted by the King of
Prussia."

It was a brave and brilliant beginning. It
avoided the real issue, and appealed to patriot-
ism and the public. It drew the admission
that there was, indeed, a public which might
have a word to say. It appealed to pity with-
out any sacrifice of pride. It showed that
Catherine was not afraid, and at the same time
it moved the Empress. Tears were now mingled
with Elizabeth's reproaches. She recalled the
days when Catherine had been ill, and she had
wept for her. She began to find it difticult to
push home her complaints. There was a look
in Catherine's eyes and a tone in Catherine's
voice which discouraged and disconcerted her.
And then Peter broke into the conversation,
and gave Catherine her opportunity to divide
and conquer —

63

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

" She has a nasty temper," said Peter,
" and she is shockingly pig-headed."

"If it is of me that you are speaking,"
repHed Catherine, " I am very pleased to
have the opportunity of telling you in the
presence of Her Imperial Majesty that it is
quite true that my temper is sharp towards
those who advise you to treat me with injustice,
and that I became pig-headed because I found
that my endeavours to please you only caused
you to show your dislike for me."

'' Your Imperial Majesty," pursued Peter,
" can judge of her temper from her language.
Let me tell you a story to show how nasty she
can be."

But Peter was not encouraged to tell his
story. The Empress, for reasons which have
been given, did not like him. Catherine, in
fact, had seen letters in which the Empress
had stated her candid opinion of Peter. In
one of them she had called him '' that damned
nephew of mine." In another she had written,
'' My nephew is an idiot. The Devil take
him ! " In so far as the quarrel was a domestic
one, her sympathies were far more with his
wife than with him. She paced the room,
listening now to one, now to the other ; and
she realised (as Catherine saw) that Peter only
wanted his wife put out of the way in order
that he might instal Elizabeth Vorontsof in her
place. Of these two women (if she must choose
64

BESTUCHEF'S PLOT

between them) it was distinctly Catherine
whom she preferred. So she snubbed Peter,
and turned to Catherine, who did not flinch,
but answered her questions fearlessly, and almost
aggressively.

It was true, she admitted, that she had
corresponded with General Aprakhsin ; but
what of that ? The letters did not convict,
but acquitted her. There they were, on the
tray on the toilet table. The Empress could
see for herself that they contained nothing
treasonable — nothing of the slightest conse-
quence. In one letter she had told the General
what people in St. Petersburg were saying about
his conduct of the campaign in Prussia ; in
another, she had congratulated him on the
birth of his son. No more than that. " But
there are other letters," objected the Empress.
" Bestuchef says so." " Then Bestuchef is a
liar." " I will have him questioned on the
rack." " Your Majesty is Empress. I cannot
prevent your Majesty from doing so."

And so forth. It was not Catherine but
the Empress who was giving ground in the
encounter. Catherine had triumphantly taken
the line that, if there were to be any more of
this nonsense, she would leave the country.
Elizabeth had formed, or confirmed, the opinion
that Catherine was a woman of intelligence,
whereas Peter was a fool. She was a little
afraid of Catherine — a little afraid also of her
own advisers. She indicated to Catherine that
E 65

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

she had much to say to her which could only
be said when they were alone. Catherine replied
that she too had " a pressing desire to open her
heart." And so, at three o'clock in the morning,
the interview ended ; but presently there came
a knock at Catherine's door.

The visitor was Alexander Schouvalof — so
recently her accuser — who was now charged to
say, with the compliments of the Empress,
that Catherine must on no account distress
herself ; that the Empress would accord her
another audience, and this time would receive
her alone. The triumph was as complete as
that, and partially covered even Bestuchef's
discomfiture. The case against him was allowed
to drag on for nearly a year ; and, dt the end
of that time, though he was denounced in a
public manifesto for " allowing himself, in the
blindness of his ambition, to attempt to shake
the confidence of the Empress in her well-
beloved nephew and heir and her dear niece the
Grand Duchess," he received no punishment
beyond deposition from his office and the
command to retire to his country house and
stay there. And Catherine, meanwhile, remained
on the friendliest terms with the Empress,
as the British Ambassador — Keith, who had
now succeeded Hanbury Williams — duly re-
ported to his Government.

That was in 1759, in which year Catherine's
Memoirs come to an abrupt end with an un-
finished sentence. She pictures herself, on the
06

RETIREMENT

final pages, withdrawing from political activity,
feigning indisposition, and tiinn'ng ovcv llic
first volumes of Diden^l's J'lin [li loped i:. Ap
parently she had had her lesson, and infeiird
that it would be wiser to wait for the future
instead of anticipating it — to make friends
quietly instead of making lierself conspicuous
by intrigue. According to one of lier bio-
graphers, she " shut herself up in impenetrable
obscurity " ; while others attribute a senti-
mental motive to her retirement. Poniatowski,
to whom she had borne a child, — a daughter,
who died in infancy, — and who had lingered on
in St. Petersburg, under the pretence of ilh
health, for some months after his deprivation
of diplomatic status, was at last obliged to
leave her ; and Rulhiere, of the French Em-
bassy, represents her as refusing the society
of all women " except those who, like herself,
had loved Poles."

Very possibly she gave the impression of
doing so — for a little while. She was one of
those rare women who can be deeply sentimental
without averting their thoughts altogether from
the main chance. We are not obliged to believe
the report that she dropped from her bedroom
window on to the shoulders of Bcstuchef's
butler, to be carried pickaback to her lover's
arms ; but her heart was touched, even if
she did not make that particular sacrifice
of dignity. Poniatowski was, at any rate, a
lover who was really in love, and not a mere

67

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

gallant out for gay adventure. He cuts a
very human and engaging jfigure in his Memoirs.
He had that dme sensible which meant so much
to the women of the eighteenth century, and
was so rare in Russia. He was to write to
Catherine presently, assuring her that her love
was more to him than a kingdom, and imploring
her to summon him to her side instead of setting
him on a throne. One cannot suppose her to
have been unmoved by such unique devotion ;
one cannot doubt that she gave sentiment its
hour.

But only its hour ; for she had other things
to think about — as even Rulhiere admits. It
was during this period, he insists, that she
" laid the foiindations of her greatness.!' He
depicts her " rising at dawn and devoting whole
days to the perusal of good French books,"
while, at the same time, learning " all that
she ever knew of the arts of intrigue." He
adds that " the veil of her grand passion covered
several consolatory adventures."

It certainly covered certain adventures with
the brothers Orlof, though it might be hard to
say how far those adventures were pursued for
the sake of consolation and how far from
ulterior and more ambitious motives. The
atmosphere, at any rate, from 1759 onwards
was quite as thick with intrigue as with amours.
Elizabeth, like Charles ii., was an unconscion-
ably long time in dying, though she did not,
like Charles, apologise for the delay ; but it
68

CONSOLATORY ADVENTURES

was clear that she would die soon, and that
her death would give the signal for a re-shuffling
of the cards, and a fresh scramble for place
and influence, in the course of which new men
might come to the front. We may pause to note
the names of those who expected parts in the
coming drama, and observe them manoeuvring
for position by the Empress's death-bed.

69

CHAPTER VII

Intrigues by the Empress's Death-Bed — Paiiin — Princess
Dashkof — The Brothers Orlof — Death of the Empress
EUzabeth, and Accession of Peter in

Nobody knows — nobody will ever know — ex-
actly what happened during those days through
which the conspirators were waiting for the
Empress to die. Nothing — or hardly anything
— was put on paper ; so that nothing — or
hardly anything — can be proved. That was
the principal lesson which Catherine learnt
from the circumstances of Bestuchef's fall. It
now sufficed for her to talk, — to drop hints,
and pick them up, — to diffuse the impression
that she would be found equal to any fortune,
and that, if she were exalted to a high estate,
her friends would prosper with her.

Nor is it known for certain how and why
the Empress died. It was said that she died
of colic. It was also said that she died of a
surfeit of cherry brandy — or perhaps of brandied
cherries. Wliatever the immediate cause of
her death, it is tolerably certain that her days
were shortened by her intemperance — and also
by her fears ; for she was a weak and frivolous
70

DEATH OF THE EMPRESS ELIZABETH

woman, thrust into a strenuous and perilous
part which she was quite unfitted to sustain.

Lestocq — the French surgeon and adven-
turer who contrived the palace revolution of
1741 — is said to have frightened her into
taking the action which she took. The story
goes that he picked up a pencil and drew two
pictures which he showed to her. One of
them represented Elizabeth as a nun, with a
shaven head, immured in a convent, and him-
self as a criminal about to be broken on the
wheel ; the other depicted Elizabeth with a
crown upon her head, and himself as a courtier
seated on the steps of the throne. "You
have to choose," he said. " You have to
make your choice to-night." And she made
her choice in haste and terror, scrambling on
to the throne much as a shipwrecked mariner
scrambles on to a rock or a piece of floating
drift-wood. Whether her position was secure
or not, she never felt it to be secure.

Her temper, in reality, was mild and
amiable. Ambassadors always found her
charming. She was not without culture and
taste for the fine arts. She encouraged the
arts, if she did not know much about them.
She meant well and kindly, and, left to her
natural disposition, would hardly have hurt a
fly. If ever she was cruel, it was because she
was frightened into cruelty. Her favourites —
or some of them, at all events — continued to
love her even when she tired of them. Her

71

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

most memorable saying was that she had
never been happy except when she was in love.
But fear was, for many years, her dominant
emotion. She dreaded the night because she
knew that the night was the time for revolutions.
She dared not, as we have seen, let it be known
in what room she would sleep ; she dared not
sleep except with a trusted servant, armed
to the teeth, watching by her side — the "whole
Empire was searched for a retainer who could
be relied upon not to doze. Long prayers and
deep potations were her comforts. The prayers
became longer and the potations deeper as the
years rolled by.

Women who live thus do not live to be old.
Elizabeth only lived to be fifty-two ; and for
the last two years of her life she saw con-
spirators discounting her death, and consider-
ing what advantage they would take of it.
She could not even be sure, indeed, that they
would wait for her death before snatching at
the advantage. There was always a possi-
bility that a party might be formed in favour
of Ivan, whom she had deposed in infancy, and
who had been brought up in prisons and
monasteries. It is said that Ivan was deliber-
ately drugged into imb cility, so that he might
be harmless. It seems tolerably certain that
he was perpetually transferred from prison to
prison and from monastery to monastery, so
that conspirators who wanted to proclaim him
Emperor might not know where to find him.
72

PANIN

And the proclamation of Ivan was not
the only possibility canvassed while Elizabeth's
powers were failing. There was a party for
Peter, and also a party against him. There
was a party which was in favour of passing
over Peter in favour of Catherine's boy, Paul,
and making Catherine regent during Paul's
minority. There was a party ready to support
Peter in repudiating Catherine, declaring Paul
illegitimate, and making Elizabeth Vorontsof
Empress. They were all whispering at once
round the death-bed : some of them urging
the dying woman to settle the succession her-
self in the sense in which they wished it settled ;
others speculating whether it would not be
better to have a forged will in readiness to
produce at the hour when the inheritance fell
in. And Catherine, meanwhile, was saying
nothing, but working quietly — putting nothing
on paper, but conciliating the friends who
were presently to stand powerfully and use-
fully on her side. Even the Schouvalofs were
willing to be conciliated now, though it was
not to them that she proposed to confide her
secrets and entrust her fate. She wanted a
statesman, a soldier, and a female confidante ;
and she found Panin, the Orlofs, and Princess
Dashkof.

Panin, when a handsome youth of nine-and-
twenty, had been proposed by Bestuchef for
the post of favourite to Elizabeth. It is un-
certain whether he shrank from the onerous

78

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

responsibility of such functions or showed him-
self unworthy of them. There is a story, for
which Poniatowski is the authority, that the
Empress waited and waited, expecting him to
knock at her door, and at last peeped out and
found that he had fallen asleep in the passage ;
but that story may be malicious gossip. Be
that as it may, he entered the Diplomatic
Service, served with distinction at Copenhagen
and Stockholm, and, on his recall in 1760, was
appointed tutor to the Grand Duke Paul. He
was now thirty-nine, and fat — too fat, and
also too indolent, to be any longer eligible for
the post of favourite.

Though indolent, however, he was ambitious,
and though corpulent, he was capable. When,
in the course of time, he became Foreign Minister,
the various Ambassadors sent home anecdotal
photographs of his way of life. For instance —

" He was devoted to the pleasures of the
table, to women, and to gambling. By eating
too much and sleeping too much, he had become
a veritable ball of fat. He rose at noon, and
listened to funny stories until one ; then he
took a cup of chocolate, and spent three hours
in dressing. At half-past three he sat down
to dinner, and continued dining until five. At
six lie went to bed and slept until eight, at
wliich hour his valets pulled him out of ])ed
and set him on his legs. His second toilet
finished, he sat down at the card-table and
'74

PRINCESS DASHKOF

played until eleven. Then came supper, and
then more games of cards. About three, he
retired to work, finally getting to bed about
five."

So writes Laveaux. He is a hostile witness ;
but the evidence of the friendly witnesses is
substantially the same. They merely add that
Panin was as honest as he was obese ; and it
is clear that he was also, in comparison with
Catherine's other friends, experienced, discreet,
and shrewd. There was Italian blood in his
veins, — the Paganinis have claimed kinship with
him, — and one may perhaps think of him as
an adipose and incorruptible Machiavelli. A
faction inspired by him would move slowly,
and keep open a line of retreat. He would
remember, and insist upon, the maxim : Chi
va piano va sano ; chi va sano va lontano. He
would pull wires adroitly, and be careful to
pull none which would set alarm bells ringing.
His name, too, and his position, carried weight.
He was a most valuable asset to the party,
though he would keep in the background and
leave violent action to others.

Of Princess Dashkof one speaks with some
hesitation, because it is almost impossible to
do so without contradicting a lady. She was
a Vorontsof — a sister of the Elizabeth Vorontsof
whom Peter preferred to his wife ; and she was,
at this time, about eighteen years of age. Her
Memoirs contain a full account of the conspiracy

75

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

which we are approaching ; and they give us
to understand that she was the originator of
it, and its inspiring genius. She tells us how,
hearing that the Empress's end was at last
imminent, she rushed to Catherine with the
news, exclaiming breathlessly, " In the name
ol Heaven, place your confidence in me ; I am
worthy of it." She adds that Catherine had
" formed no sort of plan," and believed that
there was nothing for her to do but to place her
trust in God ; and she reports herself as saying,
in reply to this admission, " Then your friends
must act for you. As for myself, I have zeal
enough to inflame them all."

It cannot be. Girls of eighteen have never
been as important as all that, at any period,
or in any country. The view of Rulhiere, of
the French Embassy, that Princess Dashkof
was only " the excited fly on the wheel," taking
all the credit for its revolutions, is more in
accordance with the probabilities. Perhaps we
may trust her for the spectacular details of the
drama about to be described ; and we may
certainly conclude that use was made of her
— that she was trusted — ^that she went to and
fro carrying messages. But that — except for
one moment's useful activity — is all. She
was confidante, but not conspirator - in - chief,
though she magnified her role in later life,
when she and Catherine had quarrelled and
she wished to overwhelm Catherine with railing
accusations of ingratitude. Catherine, at thirty-
76

GREGORY ORLOF

two, was not the woman to ask a girl of
eighteen to pilot her to a throne — to organise
a party for her, and then to lead that party.
That was a man's work ; and it was on men
that she must lean. Long before Princess
Dashkof burst into her bedroom with hysteri-
cal offers of help, she had had her quiet talks
with Panin, and also with the Orlofs, and
more particularly with Gregory and Alexis
Orlof.

The name Orlof means eagle, and was be-
stowed upon the founder of the family on
account of his signal intrepidity. As a private
soldier, implicated in a military revolt, he was
condemned to death in 1689 ; but the cool courage
which he displayed on the scaffold saved him at
the eleventh hour. The ground was covered with
the bleeding heads of comrades already executed.
The indifferent air with which he brushed those
heads aside as he took his own way to the block
arrested Peter the Great's attention. Such a
man, he said, must not die ; such a man, on
the contrary, must be pardoned and promoted.
So Ivan Orlof was rescued from the headsman's
axe, and ennobled. He becarhe the father of a
Governor of Novgorod, and the grandfather
of the five brothers who were to be Catherine's
companions in the desperate adventure which
she was preparing : Ivan, Theodore, Vladimir,
Alexis, and Gregory — the two last named being
Catherine's especial friends.

77

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

They were handsome young officers ; and
Catherine always had a tenderness for sucli,
though her tenderness seldom blinded her eyes
to their intellectual limitations. The French
Ambassador, in one of his dispatches, described
Gregory in particular as " a perfect blockhead."
But Gregory, blockhead or not, was the hand-
somest man in the Russian army — and Alexis
was the tallest and the strongest ; and they all
had the reputation of officers whose men would
follow them wherever they chose to lead ; and
the Guard, as it had proved in more than one
palace revolution, could, if it were unanimous,
dispose of the destinies of Russia. The task of
the Orlofs, therefore, in the rough work to
come, was clearly marked out for them; and
they could be depended upon, because Gregory
had succeeded Poniatowski as Catherine's lover.
Our first glimpse of him is in the Historical
Memoirs of Sir Nathaniel Wraxall.

Wraxall knew Wroughton — the British
Consul in whose house we have seen Catherine
and Poniatowski meeting, with the connivance
of the British Ambassador. Catherine dis-
tinguished Wroughton by " personal attentions
of the most flattering nature " ; and Wraxall
considered it " not an improbable supposition
that she might have carried to the utmost ex-
tent her preference of him " ; but that is not
so certain. He was satisfied, at any rate, to be
" her humble friend and servant " ; and, in that
capacity, he received a confidence from her —
78

GREGORY ORLOF

" Crossing the court of the Winter Palace
at Petersburg, some time during the year 1760,
the Grand Duchess, who leaned on his arm,
pointed out to him a young man in the uniform
of the Russian Guards, then in the act of
saluting her with his spontoon. Vous voyez
ce beau jeune homme. Le connaissez-vous ?
Wroughton replying in the negative, II s'appelle
Orlof, said Catherine. Croiriez-vous quHl a eu la
hardiesse de me faire V amour ? II est Men hardly
madame, answered he, smiling. The conversa-
tion proceeded no further ; but it remained
deeply imprinted upon Wroughton' s recollec-
tion, who from that moment silently anticipated
the future favour of Orlof."

Wraxall's French is probably at fault here.
Catherine must certainly have said faire la cour,
and not faire V amour, which means rather more
than she would have been at all likely to say ;
but that is a detail. The passage shows us
the love affair beginning at a time when
Catherine was only seeking " consolatory ad-
ventures " to relieve her distress at the loss of
Poniatowski, and had no glimmering idea of
the purpose to which this particular adventure
could be turned.

The times being troubled, however, that
idea gradually, and almost inevitably, took
shape. Catherine was, or at all events soon
might be, pretty much in the case in which
Elizabeth had felt herself to be when Lestocq

79

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

had scared her into action with his allegorical
drawings. She was less easy to scare than
Elizabeth ; but she was more ambitious —
readier to believe, in short, that the best way
out was the way on, and to consider the friend-
ship of friends and the love of lovers from the
point of view of the use which could be made
of them. It was borne in upon her that, just as
some men achieve their ambitions through the
favour of women, so some women may achieve
theirs through the favour of Guardsmen — and
that the Orlofs were instruments made to her
hand. They were stupid enough not to be
the obvious objects of suspicion, but shrewd
enough to know how to exploit military
jealousies — the jealousies, in particular, which
subsisted between the Guard and Peter's Hol-
stein troops. 1 If their wits were not specially
sharp, their nerves were imperturbable. Their
role was to corrupt the Guard with drink, ready
money, and lavish promises ; and they knew
that the Guard had no objection to being
corrupted, but was proud of its tradition as a
Praetorian force which could make Emperors
and unmake them.

So the days passed, and the intrigues pro-
ceeded ; and the Empress, lying on her death-
bed, soothing her last hours with cherry brandy,
— unless it was with brandied cherries, — was
pressed to do and to say this, that, and the other
thing, in order to commit her successors. Now

1 Germans, and therefore unpopular with Russians

80

ACCESSION OF PETER III

Ivan Schouvalof had her ear ; now her con-
fessor, to whom Panin had breathed sugges-
tions. Probably what happened was not ex-
actly what anybody wanted. Certainly it was
not exactly what Catherine and the Orlofs
wanted — nor was it exactly what Peter wanted.
Husband and wife would each have preferred
to see the other pushed aside ; instead of which,
a last attempt was made to make the peace
between them. There was to be no question
of any alternative heir, no question of a
regency. Grand Duke and Grand Duchess
were brought together to the bedside of the
dying Empress ; and the Empress murmured
the words which the priest prompted —

" That she had always loved them ; and
that, with her dying breath, she wished them
all kinds of blessings."

Then, on 5th January 1762, she died ; and
there was no revolution as yet, and no diver-
sion — as those best informed had expected
that there would be — of the agreed order of
succession. Peter, in due course, received the
formal message that the Empress " commanded
him to live long " ; and he ascended the throne
as Peter iii., and was recognised by the Senate
before the Guard had time to speak.

F 81

CHAPTER VIII

Policy of Peter iii. — Ill-treatment of Catherine — Her
Conspiracy

Everything, so far, had happened normally ;
the normal course being, after all, the line of
least resistance. The conspirators were not of
one mind as to what they wanted. There were
too many collateral or inter-related conspiracies
for any one conspiracy to prevail. The con-
spiracy of which Panin was the soul was not
quite identical with the conspiracy in which
the Orlofs were the moving spirits. There were
wheels within wheels — conspiracies within con-
spiracies. No one was quite ready, at the
critical moment, to translate conspiracy into
action. Catherine herself was unready, for an
interesting reason. She was about to become
the mother of a child ^ of which Gregory Orlof
is presumed to have been the father. The
result was that all the conspirators alike found
themselves confronted with an accomplished
fact : the accession, and the acceptance,
without conditions, of Peter iii. The Arch-
bishop of Novgorod preached a suitable sermon,

^ Brought up under the name of Bobrinski.

82

PETER III

exclaiming, with suitable gestures, and in a
suitable tone of voice, " Happy Russia ! God
has exalted the chosen of His people."

So far, so good ; and if Peter had been
strong, or discreet, or well-advised, his accession
might have been the end of his troubles instead
of the beginning of them. But Peter, as we
know, had none of these qualities. It did not
much matter whether he was well or ill advised,
because he would not listen to advice. He
was weak, but stubborn, after the manner of
drunkards ; a fool with interfering propensities.
It did not occur to him that anything he
did could have -any consequences other than
he intended ; and his attitude towards his
Empire was like that of a child towards a new
toy — he wanted to try experiments with it for
which it was not designed, and to pull it to
pieces in order to see the wheels go round. His
position was not strong enough to stand that
strain ; and he himself was neither strong
enough to repair his errors nor keen-witted
enough to see them.

Some of his measures were commendable ;
so that a partisan could make out a case for
him. It could be argued that he was clement
because he recalled political exiles from Siberia —
Biren, Munnich, Lestocq, and various others.
It could be argued that he loved his people
because he reduced the tax on salt, and that
he was broad-minded because he exempted
the nobility from the obligation, previously im-

88

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

posed upon all of them, to serve the State
either as soldiers or as civil servants. But
the argument would have little value. The
most praiseworthy of Peter's reforms were not
really thought out. One can discover no guid-
ing idea behind them — nothing but a love of
change for its own sake; and they proceeded
concurrently with other changes, and other
lines of policy, which gave offence. In his
drunken, pig-headed way, almost without know-
ing what he did, — and certainly without weighing
the consequences of what he did, — Peter flung
out challenges in all directions : a challenge
to Russian sentiment ; a challenge to the
Russian army ; a challenge, above all, to
Catherine. Owing to the impression created
by the two former challenges, the last was
taken up with an energy which surprised him.
One of the objects of the Revolution of 1741,
it will be remembered, had been to put an
end to the exploitation of Russia by Germans.
Peter reversed that policy, and made haste
to recall Prussians from exile, and to give high
command to Marshal Munnich. The one en-
thusiasm of which he was capable was enthusiasm
for Frederick the Great. He made no secret
of his ambition to go to war, with Frederick
the Great for his commander-in-chief ; and,
as a step towards that end, he at once stopped
the war in which Russia and Prussia were then
engaged. At the same time, he proceeded to
reform Russian military discipline on the
84

PETER III

Prussian model ; raised his uncle. Prince George
of Holstein, to the chief command ; and sub-
stituted a Holstein regiment for his previous
bodyguard. Nothing could have been more un-
popular. If the hornet's nest was not actually
stirred, at least it was humming with anger
and in a state in which it would take very
little to stir it. It was, indeed, as if Peter
had simultaneously given Catherine a grievance
and put a weapon into her hands. We shall
see how she snatched at the weapon and used it.
The trouble seems to have been simmering
even when Peter's subjects were swearing allegi-
ance to him —

" The hearts of the greater number of them
were filled with grief, and with hatred and
contempt for their future Emperor ; but their
fears and their sense of their weakness over-
bore these emotions. They all made haste to
submit even before the Empress's eyes were
closed."

So M. Breteuil reports ; and a few days
later he has something to say about the new
Emperor's personal habits —

" The Emperor is leading the most shocking
life. He spends all his evenings in smoking
and drinking beer. He continues these diver-
sions until five or six o'clock in the morning,
by which time he is nearly always dead drunk."

85

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

Elsewhere we find the gaieties of the Palace
compared with those of a guardroom, and read
of the admission of actresses to tlie Imperial
revels — actresses of the baser sort, who be-
haved with the audacious familiarity of such,
even in the presence of ladies-in-waiting and
maids-of-honour. It is said that the wisest
of Peter's decrees were drafted for him by
clerks while he was engaged in these uproarious
nocturnal recreations, and that he signed them
in the morning without the dimmest apprecia-
tion of their bearing. Some of the stories
belonging to this category have, of course, been
denied, and some of them may not be true;
but we may safely trust the impression which
they convey. Peter's most thoroughgoing ad-
vocates never get further than denying that
he was drunk on a particular occasion. They
never venture to assert that he was sober on
the whole, but leave us our picture of the throne
of Peter the Great now occupied by Peter the
Impossible.

And Peter the Impossible was also Peter
the Bully ; and the principal victim of his
brutalities was his wife. That too is clear from
M. de Breteuil's dispatches —

" The position of the Empress is very cruel.
She is treated with the most marked contempt.
She bears with great patience the Emperor's
insults and the haughty airs of Mile Vorontsof.
It will be strange to me if this princess,
86

PETER III

whom I know to be brave and energetic, is not
presently tempted to some desperate course.
I know friends of hers who are trying to calm
her, but who would nevertheless risk their lives
for her if she desired it."

That already on 18th January. By 15th
February M. de Breteuil has begun to put dots
on the i's —

" The Emperor has only seen his son once
since his accession. Many people are of opinion
that if his mistress should have a child, he
would marry her, and make the child his heir.
But the epithets which Mile Vorontsof has
applied to him in the course of a quarrel
are very reassuring from this point of view."

And then on 14th April we read —

" You know, of course, that M. de Soltikof
is the real father of the Grand Duke. This
M. de Soltikof was recalled by the Emperor soon
after his accession, and is being treated by
him with great distinction. After his return,
it is said, the Emperor sent for him several
times, and had several long conversations with
him. Persons in the intimacy of the Empress
believe that his purpose was to induce him
to confess that he had enjoyed the princess's
favours."

And then, only two days later —

87

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

" The Emperor has been to see Ivan."

These extracts give us the skeleton of the
plot which was proceeding and was to provoke
the counterplot. Soltikof was to be induced,
whether by threats or promises, to acknowledge
himself the father of the Grand Duke Paul.
On the strength of that confession, Paul was
to be denounced as illegitimate and Catherine
to be divorced. Peter would then marry Eliza-
beth Vorontsof, and raise her to the throne in
Catherine's place. If Elizabeth failed to give
him an heir, then Ivan was to be fetched from
his prison and adopted ; while Catherine was
to be immured in a nunnery, with a shaven
head. Catherine, in short, was being manoeuvred
into just the same dilemma which had faced
the Empress Elizabeth in 1741. She would
have to choose between a nunnery and a throne ;
and she was not the woman to prefer the nunnery.

Exactly what hindered the execution of
Peter's plan one cannot confidently say. Pre-
sumably a good many circumstances conspired
to hinder it. There may have been difficulties
with Soltikof, who may have had honourable
scruples, and hesitated to make a public boast
of a lady's favours. There certainly were
difficulties with Ivan, who proved to be of un-
sound mind, and therefore unlikely to arouse
the enthusiasm of the populace if the populace
were allowed to see too much of him. Peter
went to see him in his prison, and formed that
88

PERSECUTION OF CATHERINE

impression. Catherine's friends, too, may have
exercised a restraining influence ; while Peter's
drunken habits, and intermittent quarrels with
his mistress, may have interfered with the con-
tinuity of his policy.

In spite of Ivan, and in spite of Soltikof,
his scheme might have succeeded if he had had
the sense to keep sober and silent. Instead
of that, he was noisy, violent, and irresolute ;
preluding action with menace; letting " I dare
not " wait upon " I would " ; and pursuing
Catherine with a campaign of coarse insults which
attracted widespread attention, and enlisted sym-
pathy on her side. He summoned guests from
her table to join a supper which he was giving
to his mistress. He forbade her to take snuff,
and deprived her of her snuff-box. He deprived
her of fruit at her meals, for no other reason
than because he knew that she liked it. He paid
pointed attention to his mistress in her presence,
and at a great dinner-party, at which four
hundred guests were present, he called her
a fool ^ — shouting the word down the table
at the top of his voice. And then, as a cul-
minating outrage, came the threat to divorce
her, and shave her head, and send her to a
nunnery.

There can be little doubt that he really
meant to do it ; and the orthodox must make
what they can of the fact that, while the monks

^ One so translates the word, but the expression actually
used was much coarser.

89

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

were shrieking with horror at Peter's schemes for
the confiscation of ecclesiastical property, no
ecclesiastic voice was raised in protest against
the proposal to use a nunnery as a state prison
for the repudiated spouse of a dissolute sovereign.
Perhaps they will urge that it ill becomes the
orthodox to be, morally or spiritually, in
advance of their times ; perhaps that a little
convent discipline would have been to Catherine's
advantage. But Catherine was not the sort of
woman to fall in with that view. If she had
to choose between a nunnery and a revolution,
she would prefer the revolution. If her husband
came to a bad end in the revolutionary turmoil,
so much the worse for him. He had begun
the game of bowls, and he must take his chance
of the rubbers.

So Catherine argued ; so also argued those
about her ; so especially argued Gregory and
Alexis Orlof. It has been said that they were
both her lovers — but, if so, they were like
the lovers of the Empress Elizabeth, *' col-
leagues rather than rivals," and not in the
least jealous of each other. Their plans —
such simple plans as they thought necessary —
were formed. The goodwill of the Guard had
been bought — the French Ambassador had
been asked (though he had refused) to lend
money for the purpose. The hour had come
to strike. Alexis Orlof knocked at Catherine's
door to announce it, in the same simple and
matter-of-fact style in which he might have
90

PERSECUTION OF CATHERINE

announced that dinner was ready, or that the
carriage was waiting —

" It is time to get up. We are prepared to
proclaim you Empress."

But now we must go back a little, and see
what had been happening to bring about this
sudden crisis.

91

CHAPTER IX

The Revolution of 1762 — The March against Peter

Conspiracy, as we have noted, came, for the
first time, to the surface when Catherine- heard
a tap, at two o'clock in the morning, at her
bedroom door ; and the conspiracy which then
emerged was not Panin's conspiracy but Orlof's.
It emerged prematurely, and translated itself
precipitately into action, because it was clear
that otherwise itr would -be dragged to light and
crushed.

The Guard had been corrupted in part, but
not entirely. There was some misunderstanding
as to who was in the plot and who was not. A
certain Captain Passik made the mistake of
speaking of it in the presence of a soldier who
had a grievance against him on account of
punishments inflicted for breaches of discipline,
and the soldier seized the opportunity to avenge
himself. He denounced Passik to his superiors,
and Passik was arrested. A courier was dis-
patched to the Emperor with the news. The
danger was imminent that Passik's secret would
be extorted from him, together with the names
92

THE REVOLUTION OF 1762

of his confederates, by means of the thumbscrew
and the rack.

Passik's disappearance, however, was at once
remarked, for the confederates had taken the
precaution of setting a special spy to shadow
each of the leaders of the movement. The
arrest took place at nine o'clock in the evening,
and a quarter of an hour later Princess Dashkof
was informed of it through a Piedmontese
adventurer named Odart. This was the one
moment at which she was, and had to be,
something more than the fly on the wheel.
Everything, for a brief space, hinged upon
her resource and energy ; and, girl though
she was, she proved herself equal to her
task. First of all, she knocked up Panin;
and we need not stop to inquire into the
truth of the report that she had previously
inveigled Panin into the conspiracy by consent-
ing to become his mistress. The essential fact
is that Panin was too fat — perhaps also too
timorous — to be hurried. He temporised ; he
made long speeches ; he spoke of the horrors
of civil war ; and he went back to bed. But
Princess Dashkof did not go to bed.

It was now nearly midnight ; and time
pressed, for the courier was already well on
his way to Peter's headquarters with the news
of Passik's arrest. Many other arrests — enough
of them to paralyse the movement — would in-
evitably follow if the conspirators waited for
the dawn ; but Princess Dashkof did not wait

93

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

for it. She slipped instantly into her disguise of
male attire, and ran out to look for the Orlofs.
She was accustomed to meet them, as it were
by accident, on one of the city bridges ; and
there, by good fortune, she found them, and
told them her story. According to her own
statement, she then scrawled a note — " Come
at once ; the matter is urgent " — and bade one
of them gallop with it to Catherine ; but that
is doubtful. It was their own conspiracy ; and
they may be presumed to have known how to
conduct it without waiting for directions from
a girl of eighteen. At all events, they acted —
and acted at once — without much further refer-
ence to her.

Neither Peter nor Catherine, it is to be
noted, was then at St. Petersburg. He, as
has been said, was at Oranienbaum — a summer
seat, some distance down the Neva, opposite
the island fortress of Cronstadt. She was at
her summer seat at Peterhof, which lies on
the way from Oranienbaum to St. Petersburg ;
and she was sleeping, for reasons of her own,
not in the Palace itself, but in a chalet in the
garden. She could get to St. Petersburg, we
must observe, more rapidly then Peter could ;
and messengers from St. Petersburg to her
had a shorter distance to travel than messengers
to him — an important circumstance in view of
the race against time which was now beginning.

With Peter at Oranienbaum were the
members of his Court, and also his Holstein
94

THE REVOLUTION OF 1762

troops ; and we know that between them and
the Guard, stationed at St. Petersburg, a keen
jealousy, not to say a violent animosity, sub-
sisted. He was preparing to undertake a war,
in the interest of his Holstein possessions,
against Denmark. He had been warned that
such a war would be exceedingly unpopular in
Russia ; but he was obstinate, and would not
listen to warnings. Vague rumours of dis-
content and sedition in the capital reached
his ears, but did not trouble him. He was
amply supplied with beer and tobacco, and
was enjoying himself.

" All this sort of thing," reported the
French Charge d' Affaires, " does not prevent
the Emperor from living with absolute freedom
from anxiety. He spends his time in drilling
his soldiers, giving balls, and arranging operatic
entertainments. He has taken all the prettiest
women in St. Petersburg with him. I observe
their husbands pacing the gardens of the capital
with melancholy countenances."

That was written on 6th July, and two days
later the storm burst.

Peter received the news of Passik's arrest,
but did not appreciate its significance. All
was well, he argued, because Passik was locked
up. Time enough to deal with Passik when
he had finished his debauch, and slept off its
effects. He did not know that Passik, before

95

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

they lodged him in his dungeon, had found a
means of passing a friend a pencilled note :
" You must act without delay, or all is lost " ;
and he knew and suspected nothing of Princess
Dashkof's midnight conference with the Orlofs
on the bridge. He had arranged to go to
Peterhof to celebrate the fete of his patron
saint ; and he duly set out for Peterhof with
his suite, which included seventeen of the
pretty women above referred to.

It is said to have been his intention, on
arriving at Peterhof, to proceed, at last, to
the arrest of his wife, and the shaving of her
head, with a view to her long-contemplated
relegation to a nunnery ; but whether that
was actually so or not one cannot say. What-
ever his intentions, he was too late to execute
them. His nominal object in going to Peterhof
was to keep the festival with the Empress ; but
no Empress was there to receive him. He
arrived at eight, but she had departed at two
— none of the scared servants who were
questioned could tell him why or whither.
And that, of course, brings us back to the
picture of Alexi? Orlof tapping at her bedroom
door, and waking Catherine from her slumbers
with the news that everything was ready for
her proclamation as Empress.

" Passik is arrested," he explained. " There
is no time to lose. I have a carriage waiting
for you."
96

THE REVOLUTION OF 1762

Hearing that, Catherine dressed as quickly
as she could, and got into the carriage with her
maid. Alexis Orlof drove, and another officer
sat behind as a footman. When the carriage
broke down on the rough road, they impressed a
country cart in place of it. Meeting the French
barber, who was on his way to dress the Em-
press's hair for the Emperor's dinner-party,
they picked him up and took him with them,
so that he might not gossip. Approaching
St. Petersburg, they found Gregory Orlof and
Prince Bariatinski waiting for them ; and so
the wild gallop continued until they reached
the barracks of the Ismailofski regiment, where
the soldiers, half dressed and only half awake,
quickly gathered round them, cheering.

That was the end of the race through the
white night of a northern midsummer, with a
crown for the prize and the gallows as the
penalty of failure. For a moment Catherine
doubted whether she had really won the race.
Very few soldiers were visible as yet ; and
soldiers in night-shirts inspire less confidence
than soldiers in uniform. They were hurrying
from their beds, however, dressing as they came ;
and Catherine did not wait for them to finish
dressing before she began to harangue them —
seizing her first chance to prove her metal, and
proving it conclusively.

She had heard, she said, of their devotion ;

and she had come to throw herself on their

protection. The Emperor had threatened her

G 97

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

life — her life and her son's life also. The order
for their execution had been issued, — the
assassins were already on their way, — etc. etc.
It may not have been quite true, but the
Guardsmen believed it, and they understood
that vodka would presently flow like water in
their barracks ; so they shouted till the rafters
rang, while Catherine called for a priest to
consecrate her usurpation.

And that as a matter of course. For,
whatever priests may think, the rulers of the
earth always look upon the Church as a branch
of the Civil Service, and regard the clergy as
humble, though useful, functionaries whose
business it is to pray as they are told. That
was Catherine's view of them, and the soldiers
shared it. They fetched the regimental chaplain
from his bed, and hustled him down into the
barrack yard — soldiers on each side of him,
gripping him firmJy by the arm. They told
him what to pray for, and he prayed for it.
They told him to hold out the cross to be kissed,
and he obeyed them. They swore allegiance
on the sacred emblem ; and then they formed
a procession, bidding the priest carry the cross
aloft, and pushing him along in front.

That at the very hour at which Peter was
searching Peterhof in vain, vaguely realising his
peril, and crying to Elizabeth Vorontsof in his
despair, " Romanovna, will you believe me
now ? Catherine has made her escape. I told
you that she was capable of anything," And
98

THE REVOLUTION OF 1762

truly Catherine was capable of a great deal —
capable of more even than Peter had guessed
in the days when, grateful to her for having got
him out of some small difficulty, he had christened
her Madame la Ressource. For while Peter was
raising the hue and cry through the corridors
and grounds of her summer pleasure-house,
Catherine was marching from barracks to
barracks in his capital, recruiting fresh adherents
everywhere, releasing Passik from his prison as
she marched.

Only at the Preobrajenski barracks was
there a momentary show of resistance. . Eliza-
beth Vorontsof's brother Simon was a captain in
that regiment. He and a Major Voieikof meant
to be loyal to their Emperor. They harangued
their men, and led them forth, thinking to arrest
Catherine, and met her force in front of the
Kazan church. Street fighting seemed immi-
nent ; but not all the officers, and very few of
the men, were willing to follow their leaders.
One of them tried what a sudden shout would
do to break down discipline. " Hurrah ! The
Empress ! The Empress ! " he cried ; and the
cry was taken up, and the force of discipline
was broken. Vorontsof and Voieikof could
only break their swords and submit to be
arrested. Their men joined forces with the
mutineers ; and all of them streamed together
into the church, where they first swore allegiance,
and then knelt in prayer. Panin, who had been
too fat to act precipitately, was not too fat to

99

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

slip down from his fence and pray on the winning
side.

Prayer finished, the procession was resumed.
Catherine's followers were now eighteen thousand
strong, and in undisputed possession of the city.
Some of them began to loot the house of the
unpopular Prince George of Holstein ; but that
was quickly stopped. The rest escorted Cather-
ine to the Winter Palace, where the Senate and
the Holy Synod arrived to pay their homage.
Catherine sat down to dinner at an open window
amid the plaudits. She lifted her glass and
pledged the multitude, whose ringing cheers
continued to resound. The Revolution, as the
British Ambassador reported to his Government,
had been effected in a couple of hours — between
seven and nine o'clock in the morning — without
the shedding of a single drop of blood ; no
material damage having been done, except that
the rings of Princess George had been torn from
her fingers, and the windows of a few wine-
shops had been broken. Already the printing-
presses were at work, and in the course of the
morning manifestoes came pouring forth from
them —

" Her Imperial Majesty, having to-day as-
cended the throne of All the Russias in response
to the unanimous wishes and pressing solicita-
tions of all her faithful subjects and all true
patriots of this Empire, has given orders that the
news of the event shall be communicated to all
100

THE REVOLUTION OF 1762

the Foreign Ministers residing at her Court,
and ■ that they shall be assured that Her Im-
perial Majesty desires to maintain friendly re-
lations with the sovereigns, their masters. The
Ministers will be informed, at the earliest possible
moment, on what day it will be convenient for
them to present their compliments to Her Im-
perial Majesty and offer their congratulations."

That was the form of the intimation received
at the Embassies and Legations. Other mani-
festoes, setting forth that Peter had been
dethroned in consequence of his neglect of
Russian interests and his contempt for Russian
institutions, were simultaneously addressed to
the Russian people. It was a bold and prompt
beginning ; but it remained to be seen whether
Peter's deposition would be more than pro-
visional. The criticism has been passed on him
that he let himself be deposed as easily as a
naughty child lets itself be sent to bed without
its supper ; but it could, by no means, be fore-
seen that he would do so.

Peter was not alone, but had fifteen hundred
soldiers with him. They were Holstein men,
assembled for the projected war with Denmark,
and it was to be presumed that he could trust
them. There were other Russian troops in
Pomerania, and it might be that he could also
reckon on them. For commander-in-chief he
had Marshal Munnich ; and Marshal Munnich
was a formidable warrior. He had beaten the

101

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

Grand Turk in his time, and he might very well
smash Catherine and her party now. It would
not do, at any rate, for Catherine to sit still on
her throne, regarding the battle as won. The
only measure so far taken had been to guard the
roads so as to prevent any messenger from
carrying the news of what had happened to
Oranienbaum ; but there was reason to believe
that a messenger had got through before the
roads were closed.

That made it doubly desirable to act at once.
So now that the first excitement was over, and
the first Te Deum had been sung, a council of
war was called in the Palace ; and while the
exuberant soldiers were swilling their vodka, and
playing football with their discarded Prussian
accoutrements in the streets and barrack yards,
all possible courses were debated, and the
boldest course was chosen : to sound the " boot
and saddle," and march on Oranienbaum with-
out loss of time — Catherine at the head of her
men ii military uniform, with Princess Dashkof,
also in military uniform, by her side.

102

CHAPTER X

Surrender of Peter — His Deposition by Death in Prison —
By whose Order was he killed

The first messenger to reach Peter was a
French footman who had not understood the
sights which he had witnessed. Arriving at
the moment when the Emperor was searching
for the Empress under the bed and in the linen
closets, he reported that there was no need
to search further — that the Empress was not
lost, but was at St. Petersburg; that the
entire garrison was under arms, making magni-
ficent preparations to celebrate the festival
of Peter's patron saint. While Peter was
wondering what to make of that story, however,
and how to reconcile it with the story of
Catherine's sudden flight in the small hours,
a second messenger entered, bowing low, bowing
repeatedly, making the sign of the cross, and
finally delivering a letter which, he said, he
had been instructed to place in the Emperor's
own hands. Peter first read the note to himself,
and then read it aloud. It ran thus —

103

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

" The regiments of the Guard are in revolt,
and the Empress has placed herself at their
head. It is now nine o'clock. She is on the
point of entering the Kazan church. The entire
populace appears to be taking part in the move-
ment. The loyal subjects of Your Majesty are
afraid to show themselves."

"I told you so," was fuddled Peter's
luminous comment, but no strenuous action
followed the remark. Vorontsof, his Grand
Chancellor, proposed to go to St. Petersburg to
remonstrate with the Empress, and that offer
was accepted. "It is not I who am doing
this. It is the Russian nation," was Catherine's
answer to Vorontsof s remonstrances ; and the
Grand Chancellor, observing the attitude of the
mob and the army, thought it well to temporise.
He suggested that Catherine should place him
under arrest, and charge one of her officers to
keep an eye on him. She did as he asked, and
he made himself comfortable, happy in the
thought that whoever triumphed, the victor
would have no case against him. Other men
of mark who rode off from Peterhof to St.
Petersburg on the same errand were Prince
Troubetskoi and Alexander Schouvalof ; and
they also neglected to return.

That was Peter's first hint that things were
not what they seemed — that pillars of sub-
stantial appearance could crumble, and seemingly
solid forces inelt away. He called for vodka,
104

DEPOSITION OF PETER

and drank it — and then called for more vodka,
and drank that. He paced the garden, cursing
and swearing, and appealing to those who loved
him to go and kill the Empress. He called for
a secretary, and dictated manifestoes. He set
the ladies and gentlemen of his Court to
work copying the manifestoes. He ordered
hussars to gallop off and distribute them
among the peasantry ; he sent other hussars
to scour the St. Petersburg roads for news ;
and he summoned his Holstein troops from
Oranienbaum, bidding them not forget the
artillery. And then Marshal Munnich spoke.

He was an octogenarian, and he had spent
twenty years in exile in Siberia ; but he re-
membered how he had hammered the Turks of
old, and he stepped to the front now as the
one man who was not afraid, but had kept his
head and had wit enough to form a plan. It
would be futile, he urged, to stay at Peterhof.
Twenty thousand men would be thundering
at the gates of Peterhof before it could be put
in a state of defence — resistance there could
only result in massacre. But Cronstadt was
near ; and the fleet and the garrison were loyal
— a courier had just ridden in to say so. To
Cronstadt first, then, and thence back, with
overwhelming forces, to St. Petersburg and
victory. A yacht was ready to weigh anchor.

It was the best course, if not the boldest;
but Peter would not take it. He had been
drinking vodka — tossing off glass after glass of

105

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

it — and the strong drink had given him a
stubborn drunken courage. He remembered
that he was a soldier, and spoke as he con-
ceived that a soldier ought to speak. He
declared that he would fight where he stood
— that it was absurd to run away from the
enemy before they came in sight. The courtiers
reasoned with him — even the Court jester made
serious representations, but he swore at them,
and called them cowards, and began to make his
tactical dispositions, giving orders that certain
low hills should be occupied.

But then, at eight o'clock in the evening,
the whole day having been thus lost, there
came fresh news. An aide-de-camp galloped
up with the report that Catherine and the
Guards were marching on Peterhof — that their
scouts might come in sight at any moment. At
that the Emperor's drunken courage collapsed.
He and his scared Court ran in a sudden
panic to the water-side. Men and women to-
gether, they tumbled into the yachts, hoisted
the sails, and put out the oars, and made what
haste they could, following in terror the course
which Munnich had urged them to take with a
bold heart. But they had delayed, and the
delay was their undoing. In the morning — or
even in the early afternoon — Cronstadt might
have been Peter's ; but by this time it was
already Catherine's. It had been a race against
thne : Catherine had had the longer distance
to cover ; but Catherine had started first. At
106

DEPOSITION OF PETER

the council of war which had settled the march
on Peterhof, Cronstadt had not been forgotten.
It had been remembered late in the day, but
it had been remembered at last ; and, when
it was remembered, instant action was taken.
Admiral Talitzin had been sent off alone, in a
swift cutter, to win the garrison over to Cather-
ine's side ; and he had discharged his errand.
The Governor of Cronstadt was under arrest,
and Talitzin was in command. So when the
yachts arrived at ten o'clock and tried to land,
there passed this dialogue —

" Who goes there ? "

" The Emperor."

" We have no Emperor any longer."

" But it is I. Don't you recognise me ? "

" Pass away there. Pass away."

So Peter passed away, hearing the garrison
cheer for Catherine as he passed ; but he could
not return to Peterhof, for Catherine was al-
ready there, sitting down to supper in the
pleasure - house from which Alexis Orlof had
fetched her to take possession of the throne, just
twenty hours before. " I told you so," he re-
peated. " I foresaw this plot from the very first
day of my reign"; and then, while the frivolous
ladies of the party pleasantly sang, Qu^allions-
nous f aire dans cette galere? he summoned Munnich
to his cabin, and asked him for advice. The
m.arshal replied that, though Cronstadt was
lost, Revel was still loyal.

107

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

" Row to Revel without losing an instant.
Pick up a ship-of-war there, and sail to Prussia.
You have an army there. You can return to
Russia at the head of eighty thousand men,
and in six weeks you will have won your
Empire back again."

So the marshal urged ; but the women and
the courtiers protested. Revel, they said, was
too far — the oarsmen were too tired. Besides,
very likely the reports of the revolt were ex-
aggerated. It was incredible that the whole
Empire had risen in revolt; and it was un-
dignified for an Emperor to quit the country like
a fugitive. The Empress, no doubt, had her
party, but she only wanted to make terms.
Et cetera ; and it was to the voice of the women
and the courtiers that Peter listened. Very
well, he said. Since it was impossible to return
to Peterhof, he would land at Oranienbaum.
He landed there, in the early morning, and
learnt that Catherine and her army were still
advancing.

His first impulse was to mount his horse,
and ride hard for Poland ; but this time
Elizabeth Vorontsof dissuaded him. She was
ambitious, and had no fancy to be the consort
of a dispossessed sovereign in exile ; and she
had a happy thought. Just as Revel had
remained after Cronstadt was lost, so now,
though Russia was lost, the Grand Duchy of
Holstein remained. If Peter would resign the
Empire, Catherine might be willing to leave him
108

DEPOSITION OF PETER

the Grand Duchy, and she herself could contrive
to be happy as a Grand Duchess. The experiment
was worth trying, and she persuaded Peter to try
it. He shut himself up and wrote to Catherine.
He came out and gave the order to dismantle
the Oranienbaum fortifications. And then there
followed a final and fearful interview with
heroic old Marshal Munnich, who stamped his
foot and foamed at the mouth with rage —

" What ! You're not going to put your-
self at the head of your troops, and die like an
Emperor ! If you're afraid of being hurt, hang
on to a crucifix. Nobody will dare to touch you
then, and I'll do the fighting for you myself."

So the angry veteran thundered ; but there
was to be no fighting except by a few loyal
peasants armed with scythes, whom Gregory
Orlof scornfully scattered with the flat of his
sword. Peter absolutely refused to fight, but
sent his letter instead, and received in reply
an invitation to sign the following Act of
Abdication : —

" During the brief period of my absolute
reign over the Russian Empire, I have dis-
covered that I am not on a level with my task,
but am incapable of governing that Empire
either as a sovereign ruler or in any fashion
whatsoever. I have also observed its decline,
and the imminent peril of its complete collapse,
which would have covered me with eternal

109

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

disgrace. After mature deliberation, there-
fore, acting under no compulsion, I solemnly
declare, before Russia, and before the Universe,
that I resign the government of the said Empire
for ever ; that I have no desire to rule over it,
whether as absolute ruler or under any other
form of constitution ; and that I will never seek
to do so by means of any support that I may
be able to obtain. In faith whereof I make
oath, before God and the Universe, having
written and signed this Act of Abdication with
my own hand."

Peter copied out the humiliating document,
and subscribed his name to it. That is the
action which his critics have in mind when they
say that he abdicated after the manner of a
naughty child, overawed, confessing its fault,
and submitting to be slapped and sent to bed.
The officer to whom he handed the Act of
Abdication said that his orders were to arrest
him and take him to Peterhof ; and Peter
acquiesced in that proposal also. The Order
which he wore was removed from his breast.
He was placed in a carriage, together with his
mistress and his aide-de-camp, and driven off.
The soldiers on the road raised cheers for
Catherine as he passed.

It was not Catherine who received him —
her attitude was like that of the litigant who
stands aside on the ground that the matter in
dispute has passed out of his hands into those
110

>

f

:^r<^.

*

I

DEPOSITION OF PETER

of his solicitor. This matter was in the hands
of the soldiers ; and their hands were rough.
They sent off Peter's aide-de-camp in one
direction and his mistress in another ; they
turned out Peter's pockets, scattering handfuls
of diamonds on the ground. " Now undress,"
they said ; and Peter stood, on the grand stair-
case of his own Palace, barefooted, clad only in
his shirt, a miserable object of mockery, crying
like a child. Then at last they threw a shabby
cloak over him, and drove him off to Ropscha,
where he was to be confined. According to
one account, he asked that his mistress, his
negro servant, and his monkey might accom-
pany him. According to another account, he
begged only for a bottle of Burgundy and a pipe.
They gave him, at any rate, a Bible and a pack
of cards ; and he proceeded to beguile the time
by building toy fortresses.

Catherine, meanwhile, returned to St. Peters-
burg in triumph, to reward her friends and for-
give her enemies. The promised stream of vodka
flowed in the barrack yards and in the streets,
at a cost of forty- one thousand roubles. Princess
Dashkof was given twenty-five thousand roubles ;
and her sister and the other members of her
family were pardoned in consideration of her
services, though Ehzabeth Vorontsof was
required to hand over her jewels. Orlof swag-
gered about, boasting that he had made the
Empress, and could unmake her, until either
Panin or the Hetman of the Cossacks brought

111

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

him to his senses with the remark that, if he
presumed too far, there were those who would
hang him on a gallows as high as Haman's
within a week. Even Marshal Munnich, thor-
oughly sick of Peter at last, transferred his
allegiance, and was well received. " So you
were going to fight against me ? " Catherine
asked him. " Yes, madam ; but henceforward
I hope to fight in your defence," was his diplo-
matic answer.

Still, all was not yet over. The Holstein
soldiers had, indeed, been disarmed, and locked
up in cattle-sheds and lumber-rooms until it
should be convenient to send them home ;
but there were other sources from which trouble
seemed likely to arise. There were good
Russians, taken by surprise, who now remem-
bered that Catherine was a German, whereas
the husband whom she had dethroned was
of the family of Peter the Great. Even at
St. Petersburg some of these jeered at the
Guards, asking them, " Who sold his Emperor
for two roubles ? " and the Guard showed
signs of shame ; while, at Moscow, soldiers
and populace alike refused to cheer Catherine
even when the Governor called upon them to
do so, or, at all events, only cheered her under
compulsion. It could not be said that all
was over except the shouting when the shout-
ing itself lacked spontaneity. There would
still be a party for Peter as long as Peter lived ;

and therefore

112

DEATH OF PETER

The inference was obvious — Peter would
have to die. While Peter sat in his prison
at Ropscha, clamouring in vain for his monkey,
his mistress, and his negro, swilling his Bur-
gundy, smoking his pipe, reading his Bible, and
building toy fortresses with his pack of cards,
that inference was being drawn in the Palace
at St. Petersburg. It took six days to draw
it. A message from Peter to the effect that,
" disgusted at the wickedness of mankind, he
was resolved henceforward to devote himself to
a philosophical life," made no difference to the
drawing of it. Who drew it ?

That is another of the unsolved mysteries
of history which no one will ever solve. No
one ever confessed ; and the secrets of Russian
prisons are well guarded. The only absolutely
incredible version of the story is the official
version — that Peter died suddenly of " hemor-
rhoidal colic." No one has ever believed that
statement, and some sardonic comments on
it have been preserved. D'Alembert was
presently to decline Catherine's invitation to
visit Russia on the ground, as he told a friend,
that " fatal colics are too frequent in that
country " ; and we have also Princess Dashkof's
account of her first interview with the Empress
after her reception of the news —

" I could not bring myself to enter the

Palace until the following day. I then found

the Empress with a dejected air, visibly labour-

H 113

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

ing under much uneasiness of mind. These
were her words when she addressed me : ' My
horror at this death is inexpressible ; it is a
blow which strikes me to the earth.' ' It is a
death tob sudden, madam,' replied I, ' for
your glory and for mine.' "

But Princess Dashkof acquits Catherine of
all knowledge of the crime, and Frederick
the Great took the same view in a conversation
with M. de Segur. Neither of them knew the
facts, of course ; but the Princess knew
Catherine, and it seems safer to base conjecture
on Catherine's character than to assume the
worst and infer Catherine's character there-
from. Unless she was cruel and vindictive on
this one occasion, she was very far from being
a cruel and vindictive woman ; nor was she,
so far as one can judge, a woman to be impelled
to crime by fear. But she was a woman in
the hands of men ; a German in the hands of
Russians ; a stranger in a land which had
not outgrown the traditions of savagery — a
land in which one Emperor had fried his
enemies in frying - pans and another had
knouted his own son to death, and both were
styled '' the Great."

If she had dropped a hint, or uttered a
nervously impatient word — if she had said
anything even remotely resembling Henry ii.'s
" Who will rid me of this turbulent priest ? " —
then those about her would have been fairly
114

DEATH OF PETER

sure to act on it before she had time to unsay
it ; while others — her friend Panin, for instance,
the fat, plausible, oleaginous intriguer, — the
Count Fosco, as it were, of the conspiracy, —
would have been ready to rub their soapy, self-
complacent hands, and propose to make the
best of a bad job, which might turn out to be
a blessing in disguise. But it is not even
necessary to suppose the hint to have been
given. Catherine, in the view of a good many
of the conspirators, was still a figure-head rather
than a leader ; and they were quite capable
of acting without consulting her, on the ground
that she who willed the end must also will
the means.

It was Alexis Orlof who acted — not, one
may be sure, on his own sole responsibility,
but on whose orders, or at whose suggestion,
it is quite impossible to say. The time came
when he shuddered at the recollection of the
deed, and protested that he had only done it
under constraint — an unwilling instrument,
cruelly assigned a shameful and painful part.
But that was long afterwards, when manners
were milder and more polished, and probably
also on a day on which he had drunk too freely.
There is no indication of qualms or reluctance
in the contemporary records of the deed ; and
though there are certain minor discrepancies in
those records, there is complete unanimity as to
the essential facts.

Peter, as has been said, was in prison at

115

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

Ropscha — " a pleasant place," as Catherine wrote
to Poniatowski, which he was only intended
to occupy provisionally, while still more pleasant
quarters were being prepared for him at Schliissel-
burg. He sat in his cell, with his pipe and his
bowl and his playing cards, some French novels
and a German Bible, when the door opened, and
Alexis Orlof entered, attended by one Tieplof,
who was attached to Catherine in some secretarial
capacity. Alexis, it is to be noted, was the
strongest of the Orlofs, who were all men of ex-
ceptional physical strength — a veritable Sandow
or Hackenschmidt among men.

They entered cheerily, professing to bring
good news. It was all right, they said, and
there was nothing to be afraid of. The order for
the prisoner's release would soon be made out —
they had come to tell him so". Meanwhile, they
begged permission to dine with him ; and while
dinner was preparing, they proposed a glass of
vodka — the customary Russian appetiser. They
had brought the vodka with them, and they
poured it out ; and Peter, suspecting nothing,
tossed it off. He had no sooner swallowed it than
pains seized him. No matter, said his visitors ;
it was nothing — the pains would quickly pass.
Another drop of vodka — they filled a second
glass, and put it to his lips.

But Peter now knew that he had been
poisoned, and refused the second draught —
and not only refused it, but shrieked aloud for
help. His piercing screams rang down the prison
116

DEATH OF PETER

corridors. His body servant, hearing them,
ran in ; but the colossal Alexis flung him out
again. Then came two officials. One of them
was Prince Bariatinski, just appointed Governor
of the prison ; it is uncertain whether the other
was Bariatinski' s brother or a certain young
Potemkin, aged seventeen, of whom we shall hear
again. It is also uncertain whether they merely
looked on, or rendered active help ; but that
does not matter — they were not, in any case,
on Peter's side. And Peter was down — on his
back — with Alexis, the giant, kneeling on his
chest. ; and a rope — or it may have been a strap
or a napkin — was twisted round Peter's neck,
and drawn tighter and tighter till he choked.

It was over ; and Alexis mounted his horse
and galloped to Catherine with the news, — or as
much of it as he thought it well to communicate,
— and we may believe the witnesses who tell us
that she showed surprise and horror. She sent
for Panin ; and none can say whether she told
him more than he knew or whether he already
knew more than she could tell him. Panin was
not the man to boast of his zeal in such a case,
or make admissions which, in some future
circumstances, might be used against him. He
was the man, rather, to wash his fat hands in
imperceptible soap and water, saying that, of
course, it was very unfortunate, but that what
was done could not be undone, and that the
important thing, at the moment, was to consider
when, and in what form, the public announce-

117

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

ment of the catastrophe should be made. He
advised that the secret should be kept for
four-and-twenty hours, and that an edict should
then be issued. The edict ran as follows : —

" By the grace of God, Catherine ii., Empress
and Autocrat of All the Russias, to all our
loving subjects, etc., greeting : —

" The seventh day of our accession to the
throne of All the Russias, we received infor-
mation that the late Emperor, Peter iii., by the
means of a bloody accident ... to which he
had been formerly subject, was attacked with a
most violent griping colic. That therefore we
might not be wanting in Christian duty, nor
disobedient to the Divine command, by which
we are enjoined to preserve the life of our
neighbour, we immediately ordered that the
said Peter should be furnished with everything
that might be judged necessary to prevent the
dangerous consequences of that accident, and to
restore his health by the aid of medicine. But,
to our great regret and affliction, we were
yesterday evening apprised that, by the will of
the Almighty, the Emperor departed this life.
We have therefore ordered his body to be
conveyed to the monastery of Nevski, for inter-
ment in that place. At the same time, with our
imperial and maternal voice, we exhort our
faithful subjects to forgive and forget what is
past, to pay the last duties to his body, and to
pray to God sincerely for the repose of his soul ;
118

DEATH OF PETER

willing them, however, to consider this un-
expected and sudden death as an especial act
of the Providence of God, whose impenetrable
decrees are working for us, for our throne, and
for our country."

The document, of course, is the composition
not of Catherine, but of her plausible councillor
Panin — it is quite possible that Catherine herself
got no further than suspecting the true cause of
Peter's death. No doubt, too, it was at Panin's
suggestion that Peter's body was exposed to
public view in the church of the monastery of
Alexander Nevski, in spite of the marks of
violence, which could not be concealed. For
Panin knew his Russia, and knew, therefore,
that the only way to prevent some false Peter
from cropping up, like the false Demetrius, and
making trouble in the provinces, was to give
the whole world ocular evidence that Peter was
really dead. By that means the most dangerous
of possible Pretenders was eliminated — for many
years to come, at all events. The only possible
rival still remaining, as far as anyone could see,
was Ivan ; and the mention of his name brings
us to the story of yet another prison tragedy.

119

CHAPTER XI

The Story of Ivan vi, — His Assassination in Prison.

The story of Ivan is among the most shameful
and painful in Russian annals : one of those
stories of man's inhumanity to man, and of
terror begetting cruelty, which almost compel
despair of human nature.

Ivan was guilty of nothing — there was no
pretence that he was guilty of anything, and no
charge against him, whether true or false. He
had no ambition, and no chance of harbouring
any. Whatever was done, or planned, in his
name was done or planned without his know-
ledge ; and even that amounted to very little.
He appears in history only as the possible figure-
head of possible conspiracies. He had been
called to the throne as a baby, and swept off it
again as a baby in a Revolution directed, not
against him, but against the Regent who ruled
in his name — the Revolution which resulted in
the accession of Elizabeth. But he was the
great-grandson of the half-brother of Peter the
Great ; and claims might, therefore, have been
preferred on his behalf. Consequently, he stood
120

IVAN VI.

in the way of the actual rulers — or, at least,
might stand there ; consequently, they were
afraid of him; consequently, his life was one
long persecution, beginning, not in boyhood, but
in babyhood.

At the time of Elizabeth's Palace Revolution,
he was little more than a year old ; and he was
only four, or possibly five, when he was separated
from his parents. They were sent, as we have
seen, to the shores of the White Sea, where they
died — his mother in 1746, his father not until
thirty years later. He was, at first, left at
Oranienburg, but afterwards taken to Schliissel-
burg, " and there lodged in a casemate of the
fortress, the very loophole of which was imme-
diately bricked up " —

" He was never brought out into the open
air, and no ray of heaven ever visited his eyes.
In this subterranean vault it was necessary to
keep a lamp always burning ; and as no clock
was either to be seen or heard, Ivan knew no
difference between day and night. His interior
guard, a captain and a lieutenant, were shut up
with him ; and there was a time when they did
not dare to speak to him, not so much as to
answer him the simplest question."

So Tooke writes, rendering the common
report ; and we may trust the general impression
of the picture, even if we hesitate to insist on the
details. Ivan, at any rate, had no mother, no

121

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

nurse, no governess, no tutor, no companions of
his own age — no one to speak to except gaolers,
who, as we have just read, were not allowed to
speak to him. It may or may jiot be true, as
has been said, that he was deliberately dosed
with drugs till be became imbecile. The whole
method of his upbringing made for imbecility,
and would account for it. He can hardly be
said, indeed, to have been brought up, or even
to have been dragged up — he was just kept in
captivity and allowed to live.

Physically, according to all reports, he was
fairly well developed. There is a description
of him as " full six feet high, with a fine blond
head of hair, a red beard, regular features " ;
but mentally he was little more than the beasts
of the field. It is doubtful whether he was even
taught to read; Of people other than gaolers,
of city streets, and of blue skies and green grass,
he had only a remote and faded recollection.
When he was shifted, as he often was, from place
to place, he was conveyed in a covered cart,
so that he could neither see nor be seen.

He was once brought, in that way, to Eliza-
beth at St. Petersburg. Presumably she had
some thought, as was whispered, of substituting
him for Peter as her heir ; but, if she did enter-
tain that idea, she quickly changed her mind
again ; perhaps because pressure w^as brought to
bear — perhaps because Ivan's obvious imbecility
compelled her. All that one actually knows of
the interview is that, when it was over, Eliza-
122

IVAN VI.

beth was found in tears. Slie was a tender-
hearted woman — dme sensible — and she probably
had not realised before the full extent of the
cruelty inflicted in her name. The discovery
quite upset her for half an hour or so — but that
was all. She pulled herself together, and went
back to her card-parties, and masked balls, and
brandied cherries ; while Ivan was driven back,
still in his covered cart, to his place of detention.
He remained there another six years before
there was another incident in his life ; but
then Peter iii. visited him — he also having it
in his mind to make the prisoner his heir. It
must have been an amazing interview — Peter
the Impossible asking Ivan the Imbecile how his
gaolers treated him, and saying that he was
very sorry to learn that they did not treat
him well ; but the reports of the dialogue which
have come down to us cannot be accepted as
authentic. The trail of the romancer is over
them ; and all that is well established is that
Peter promised that Ivan should be better
treated in future, and gave orders to that effect.
Whatever else he may have thought of doing, he
had not done it when the revolution overtook
him. Ivan was still in prison when Catherine
succeeded to the throne ; and the French
Charge d' Affaires commented sardonically —

" What a picture it is when one looks at it
in cold blood ! The grandson of Peter the
Great dethroned and murdered; the grandson

123

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

of the Emperor Ivan languishing in fetters ;
while a Princess of Anhalt usurps the crown of
their ancestors, paving the way to the throne by
an act of regicide."

The picture is not quite exact ; but its
inaccuracies are not important. Drawn by an
impartial observer, it shows us what a good
many people thought, and a few of them ven-
tured to say. Ivan was not in chains ; and
Catherine, personally, wished him no harm.
She adopted, and even extended, Peter's policy
of making Ivan more comfortable. She even
spoke of transferring him from a prison to a
monastery if the change would give him any
satisfaction, and if it could be effected without
any danger of the monastery becoming a shrine
of sedition and a pivot of disloyalty. But it
did not occur to her to release him. It was
a matter of course that. Ivan should always be
in prison — chiefly because he had always been
there. Ivan himself probably had grown to
expect a prison, more or less as a dog learns to
expect a kennel.

He continued, therefore, to be kept in cap-
tivity ; and, even in captivity, he continued
to be the innocent centre of disaffection for
a further period of two years. Catherine had
not yet felt her feet in her new position, and
was nervous. " The Empress's fear of losing
what she has gained," reported M. de Breteuil,
" is so obvious in her demeanour that any person
124

MURDER OF IVAN

of any account in the country feels himself a
strong man in her presence." She mastered her
fears sufficiently to show herself abroad, even
at night, with only a small escort ; but the
nervousness remained, and there probably was
enough actual danger to warrant it. Both in
St. Petersburg and at Moscow there were riots.
Princess Dashkof was suspected of knowing
more about them than she chose to tell ; and
she was ordered to leave Moscow for Riga.
Ivan's name was constantly in the mouths of
the seditious ; and Ivan had to pay the penalty
of a fault which was not his.

One knows what happened ; but how it
came to happen one can only guess. Whatever
was done was almost certainly done without
Catherine's orders, and without her knowledge,
by the men in whose hands she had placed
herself ; but even they did not appear. Perhaps
Alexis Orlof felt that one murder, committed
with his own hands, sufficed for him. Perhaps
he and his brothers, and Panin, and the rest of
them, not feeling quite confident of the outcome
of the enterprise, preferred to act through agents
who could be repudiated. Perhaps, on the other
hand, they were only responsible for the order
that, whatever happened, Ivan must on no
account be allowed to leave his prison alive.
Ostensibly, at all events, there was a plot for
Ivan's deliverance ; and one can do no more
than tell the story of its failure.

The Schliisselburg prison was guarded by

125

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

a company of the Smolensk regiment ; and one
of the sub-lieutenants of tliat company was a
certain Mirovitch — the grandson of an officer
implicated in Mazeppa's rebellion. He and a
certain Pishkof, whom he took into his con-
fidence, tampered with the men under his
command, and persuaded them to join him in
an attempt to rescue Ivan from Schliisselburg
and take him to the barracks of the Guards,
who were ready, he said, to proclaim him
Emperor, just as, two years before, they had
proclaimed Catherine Empress. It is possible
that he was a fanatical partisan, who meant
and believed what he said. It is possible that
he expected to be rewarded for his coup by the
restitution of his family's confiscated estates.
It is also possible that he was detailed to his task
as an agent ijrovocateur — commissioned to create
the circumstances in which the order for Ivan's
instant execution would have to be carried
out by his custodians. That mystery is quite
insoluble, and one can only relate what hap-
pened.

It was between one and two o'clock in the
morning when Mirovitch mustered his men, and
led them, first to the arsenal, for munitions,
and then to Ivan's cell. The noise disturbed
the Governor, who came out to see what was
happening; but Mirovitch hit him on the head
with the ])utt-end of his nmsket, and then bound
him hand and foot. The heavy dungeon door
was locked against him; but he fetched cannon
126

MURDER OF IVAN

from the ramparts, and threatened to blow
it down. It was not a door that could with-
stand artillery ; so the two officers who slept
with Ivan in his cell perceived that they would
soon be overpowered, and that they must either
lose their prisoner or kill liim. So they drew
their swords.

Ivan the Imbecile, roused from his slumbers
by the uproar, understood nothing of what
was . happening. He knew neither why he was
to be taken from his prison, nor why he was to
be put to death. He only knew that, though
life had never been worth living, he did not
want to die. It was his instinct to fight ;
and he fought with the desperate iuvy of a
beast at bay. He was unarmed, but he had
the strength of a giant. He hit out ; he
grappled; he wrested the sword out of one
of his assailants' hands and broke it. But he
had enemies behind him as well as in front.
He was tripped, and thrown, and bayoneted
where he lay, receiving no fewer than cigiit
bayonet wounds before he died ; and then his
murderer opened the door, and pointed to liis
body, saying to Mirovitch —

" There is your Emperor. Now you can do
what you like with him."

That is the end of Ivan's pitiful story, liis
body, like Peter's, Avas exposed to public
view, in order that the pubhc might harbour
no doubts of his death. It was the second
appearance of blood on the steps of Catherine's

127

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

throne. Those who wished to see her shp in
it made no secret of their beHef that she had
shed it — or at least contrived that it should be
shed. They did not abandon the belief be-
cause Mirovitch was arrested, brought to trial,
convicted, and executed. On the contrary,
they declared that some other criminal had
been compelled to personate Mirovitch on the
scaffold, and that he himself had been spirited
away and rewarded on condition that he never
showed his face again.

It is possible — for everything is possible in
Russia. The stories of Russian prisons nearly
always end in such clouds of impenetrable doubt.
The demeanour of Mirovitch in the dock was
admittedly not that of a man who feared his
fate ; but his fearlessness may just as well have
been that of the fanatic as that of the man
assured of his escape ; and the presumptions
against Catherine, in any case, are of the
slenderest. She had enemies enough to bring
the proofs home to her if there had been any
proofs to bring ; and she was, in fact, at this
time, hardly a free agent, but still in the hands
of the men who had given her her throne,
and could not see her lose it without risk to
themselves.

The accident, however (supposing it to have
been an accident), was a lucky one. The
security, if not the glory, of Catherine's reign
dates from it. We have now to see how she
became an autocrat in fact as well as in name.
128

CHAPTER XII

Catherine signals to Europe — Her Overtures to French Philo-
sophers — Gregory Orlof's Invitation to Jean-Jacques
Rousseau

The clouds of the revolution rolling away,
Catherine at last emerges, definite and distinct,
individual and recognisable. Poniatowski, in-
deed, has already revealed her charm, and the
Chevalier d'Eon has shown us the fire in her
eye; but still one has only partly known her —
has known what she did better than why she ^
did it; has had a difficulty in visualising her,
and a still greater difficulty in reading her mind ;
has had to take her, to a large extent, on trust,
inferring what she must then have been from
our knowledge of what she afterwards became.
With her accession our real knowledge begins,
and she stands out as a real woman — not the
less real because always complex and some-
times inconsistent. She stands at the window
which Peter the Great built on the Neva that he
might look out on Europe; and one can salute
her as — almost — a European.

Peter the Great had climbed out of that

window, and climbed back again ; but it can

I 129

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

hardly be said that he was a better European
on his return than on his departure. John
Evelyn, in whose house he lived at Deptford,
complained of his Oriental habits, much as
later Occidentals complained of the Oriental
habits of the first Shah of Persia who visited
London and Paris. He married a loose woman
of low birth, and knouted his son to death. It
is impossible to think of him except as a bar-
barian— a barbarian of genius, no doubt, but a
barbarian nevertheless ; and that, in fact, is
how his contemporaries thought of him. Occi-
dental potentates might, for comity's sake,
call him their " dear cousin " ; but they really
regarded him as outside the pale, and classed
him with Great Chams and Big Bashaws.
Catherine was the first Autocrat of All the
Russias whom they could, without too great
effort, accept as one of themselves.

She was a good enough Russian in a sense
— a much better Russian, in a sense, than
Peter iii. She worshipped reverentially in Ortho-
dox churches, whereas Peter had often enlivened
the hours of divine service by making faces
at the officiating clergy. She was patriotic,
too, governing the country through Russian
and not through foreign Ministers, and re-
joicing in the title of Mother of the People. The
contrast between her policy and Peter's in that
respect was one of the secrets of her strength
and popularity ; and another may have been her
preference for her own subjects in her numerous
130

SIGNALS TO EUROPE

affairs of the heart. But she was a Westerner
by birth. The cast of her mind was Occidental,
and so was her culture. She had been brought
up — or rather she had brought herself up — on
Bayle, and Montesquieu, and the Encyclo-
paedists ; and when she took her stand at the
window which Peter the Great had built, she
looked out of it in a different direction from him,
and in quest of quite other sights.

Peter the Great had looked chiefly towards
England and Holland, interesting himself mainly
in the mechanical appliances of progress — the
crafts especially of the shipwright and the
builder. Catherine looked out towards France,
letting it be known that she was interested in
fine arts and new ideas. She was also interested
in other things, of course — notably in tliose
affairs of the heart about which it will be
necessary to say a good deal more before her
portrait is complete. On that side of life she
was to prove herself somev^hat of a Super-
woman ; but it was not through such excesses
that she first challenged attention. No one
would have troubled to denounce her as the
Messalina of the North if she had not first asserted
herself as its Semiramis.

In the reign of Ivan the Terrible, Europe had
discovered Russia. In the reign of Peter the
Great, Russia had discovered Europe. Now, in
the reign of Catherine, and through Catherine,
Russia discovered France^ and not France
merely, but the Liberal France of the Encyclo-

131

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

psedists. How far she had understood the
Encyclopaedists may be questioned — she was
self-educated, and may therefore often have
admired without comprehending. But at least
she had read their books, and recognised that
they had a message for her ; and she now looked
to them for further illumination, and sought
to get into closer touch with them. She knew
them by name ; she could distinguish them one
from another ; and the first notable act of her
reign was to flash signals to them from the
westward window at which she stood — separate
signals to Voltaire, to Rousseau, to Diderot,
and to d'Alembert.

Diderot was the only one of the four whom
she was ever to meet in the flesh. She got him
to St. Petersburg at last ; and it is said that
he used gleefully to slap her thigh (in mistake
for his own) when telling her his good stories.
Ten years were to pass, however, before they
thus came into physical contact ; and, in the
meantime, Catherine made many signals, offered
many courtesies, and conferred certain benefits.
Hearing that his Encyclopcedia had been sup-
pressed in Paris, she proposed that its publica-
tion should be continued in her own capital.
Hearing that he wished to sell his books, in
order to provide a dowry for his daughter,
she bought them from him, begged him to take
care of them for her as long as he lived, made
him her librarian, and paid him fifty years'
salary in advance — a beau geste which could
132

SIGNALS TO EUROPE

not fail to arouse enthusiasm in French in-
tellectual circles.

At about the same time she invited d'Alem-
bert to settle in St. Petersburg as the tutor of
the Grand Duke Paul. The choice, in view
of the remoteness of Russia from the rest of
Europe, showed much the same degree of per-
spicacity which we should praise in the Shah
of Persia if we heard that he had extended
a similar invitation to Sir Oliver Lodge ;
and the terms offered were of truly im-
perial magnificence — twenty thousand roubles
a year, a palace, and the rank of an am-
bassador. But d'Alembert was not to be
tempted. He was not, like Diderot, the sort
of man to sit in the boudoir of an Empress,
and convulse her with good stories — he pre-
ferred the simple life in a Paris flat, with Mile
de Lespinasse ; so he made excuses. " So
many people are carried off suddenly by colic
in that country," he said, with a shrug of
the shoulders, to his friends ; while to Catherine
herself he protested that though, no doubt,
he was competent to i,each the Grand Duke a
little mathematics, still the heir to the throne
of the great Russian nation would need to be
trained in such multifarious accomplishments
that, really, the responsibility of undertaking
his education, etc. etc. ... It was a polite way
of classing Catherine, in spite of her signals,
with Great Chams and Big Bashaws ; and
Catherine perceived that she had been snubbed,

133

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

and was annoyed, albeit without, for that reason,
ceasing to signal to the intellectual potentates
of the West.

Her signal to Voltaire was chiefly important
as a tribute to his pre-eminence as a maker of
public opinion — the fact slips out in a letter
in which she naively tells him that " such ac-
quaintances are very useful." It suited Cather-
ine, in short, to keep on the blind side of
Voltaire, for much the same reasons for which
it suits a modern Tsar to keep on the blind side
of Mr. W. T. Stead. He blew her trumpet,
and presented her point of view ; she sent him
paragraphs, and he published them. " France
persecutes philosophers, but the Scythians sup-
port them," he wrote ; and he went into de-
tails when, and as, required — putting Catherine
right with the French public in the matter of
the revolution, praising her for being inocu-
lated with smallpox as a brave example to
her subjects, and writing a pamphlet for her
in support of the Russian case against the Turks.
In return she bought some of the watches
manufactured by the philosopher's dependents
at Ferney. He sent her six times as many
watches as she had ordered — about £1600 worth
in all ; and she paid the bill, albeit with the
remark that she now had watches enough to
last her for a long time.

If Catherine could be surfeited with watches,
liowever, she could not be surfeited with flattery ;
and Voltaire flattered her to the top of her
134

SIGNALS TO EUROPE

bento He praised her hands (which he had
never seen) as the most beautiful in the world,
and declared that her feet (of which he knew
as little) were " whiter than the Russian snows."
He also wrote that all philosophers everywhere
regarded themselves as her subjects ; and he
exclaimed in Latin, and in the language of
adoration : Te Catherinam laudamus ; te do-
minam confltemur. That was what she liked ;
and she was not to know that he wrote about
her to his intimates in a somewhat different
tone, saying to Mme du Deffand, for instance —

" I am perfectly aware that people reproach
her with certain little matters in regard to her
treatment of her husband ; but these are
family affairs in which I am not concerned.
Besides, it is not a bad thing for her to have
a fault to make amends for. That gives her
a motive for spurring herself to great efforts in
the pursuit of public admiration."

And Catherine did so spur herself ; and,
just as Voltaire refrained from mixing himself
in her family quarrels, so she thought it un-
necessary to take any part in his philosophical
squabbles. The first exchange of civilities with
Voltaire took place at the time of Voltaire's
estrangement from Rousseau ; but that did
not prevent Catherine from making overtures
to him and to Rousseau simultaneously.

Rousseau, at the date of her accession, and

135

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

in the years immediately succeeding it, was
being hunted from pillar to post on account of
the sentiments set forth in Emile and Le contrat
social. He had fled from France to Switzerland,
and from Switzerland to England. Catherine
had read his books — there were only three
copies of them in the whole of the Russian
Empire, but one of them was in her hands ;
and the report of his wanderings had reached
her. It was an opportunity to flash yet another
signal to the intellectual West ; so she told
Gregory Orlof to write to Rousseau and invite
him to Russia. He obeyed ; and the letter
which he sent is a delightful document.

Gregory Orlof was no Western, but a true
Scythian, not to say a true Sarmatian ; and
he was also as ignorant as it is possible for a
Guardsman and a sportsman to be. Probably
he heard of Rousseau for the first time when
he received his instructions to write to him ;
certainly he knew nothing about Rousseau
except what Catherine told him. But he sat
down at his desk, and wrestled with his instruc-
tion bravely ; and with this result —

" Sir, — You will not be surprised at my
writing to you, for you know that every man
has his peculiarities. You have yours ; I have
mine ; that is only natural, and the motive
of this letter is equally so. I see that you
have, for a long time, been moving about from
one place to another. I know the reasons
136

INVITATION TO ROUSSEAU

through public channels of information, and
perhaps I know them wrongly, for wrong
reasons are often given in such cases. I believe
you are in England with the Duke of Richmond,
and I dare say he is making you comfortable ;
but nevertheless I thought I would tell you
that I have an estate which is sixty versts (that
is, ten German leagues) distant from St. Peters-
burg, where the air is healthy, and the water
good, and where the hill- sides environing a
number of lakes lend themselves admirably to
meditation. The inhabitants speak neither
English nor French ; still less, Greek or Latin.
The priest is incapable of arguing, or preaching,
and his flock think that they have done their
duty when they have made the sign of the cross.
Wen, sir, if you ever think that this place would
suit you, you are welcome to live in it. We
would provide you with the necessaries of life,
and you would find plenty of shooting and fish-
ing. You can have people to talk to if you
like, but there will be no one to worry you,
and you will be under no obligations to anyone.
All publicity can be avoided if you wish it ;
but, in that case, I think you had better travel
by sea. Inquisitive people will importune you
less if you take that route than if you come by
land."

There is a military directness about that
composition from which one infers that Orlof
dashed it off without assistance. One pictures

137

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

the writer showing the draft to Catherine, and
Catherine finding it a little curt. The con-
cluding paragraph is a shade more polished,
and may be supposed to have been added,
with fuller instructions and under closer super-
vision. It runs thus —

" I have ventured, sir, to address you thus,
as a token of the gratitude which I feel for the
instruction which I have derived from your
works, though it was not for my learning that
they were written; and I have the honour to
remain, with all expressions of respect,

" Your obedient humble servant ..."

Such was the queer communication which
reached Jean-Jacques in Derbyshire, where he
was roaming on the hills in his voluminous
Armenian robes, to the respectful amazement
of the rustics, who did not know what to make
of him, but inclined to the belief that he was
a king kept out of his rights. The text of his
reply is graphically illustrative of the difference
between the Sarmatian and the European
civilisations —

" You describe yourself, M. le Comte, as
eccentric. It is, indeed, almost an eccentricity
to exercise disinterested benevolence ; and it
is quite an eccentricity to do so on behalf of
one who is personally unknown to you, and
who lives so far away. Your obHging offer,
138

INVITATION TO ROUSSEAU

the tone in which you make it, and your descrip-
tion of the habitation to which you invite
me, would certainly attract me if I were less
of an invalid, more active, and younger, and
if you lived nearer to the sun. I should be
afraid, however, that, when you met the man
whom you honour with your invitation, you
would be disappointed. You would expect
a man of letters — a good talker, who would
repay your hospitality with eloquent and
witty conversation. You would encounter a
very simple person : one whose taste and
misfortunes incline him to solitude ; whose only
recreation is to botanise all day long; and who
finds, in the society of the flowers and plants,
the peace, so dear to his heart, which human
beings have refused to him. Consequently,
sir, I shall not come and live in your house ;
but I shall always remember your invitation
to it with gratitude, and I shall often regret
my inability to cultivate the friendship of its
owner.

" Accept, M. le Comte, my very sincere
compliments and my very humble salutations."

So the matter dropped ; and this particular
signal was displayed in vain, just as the signal
to d'Alembert had been. But the fact that
Catherine made it, together with so many
other similar signals, as soon as she had con-
quered her place at Peter the Great's window,
and before her position there was quite secure

139

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

against disturbance, is a valuable indication
of the kind of woman that she was : a woman,
that is to say, of an energetic, not to say a
restless, mind — intellectually a daughter of the
West, though she had got most of her educa-
tion in the East — resolved to be " in the move-
ment," whatever the movement might be, and
whether she understood it or not.

Of course, however, the first glimpse which
we thus get of her is only partial. To get the
full portrait, it will be necessary to follow
her when she leaves the window, and observe
her conduct of the affairs of her Empire, and
also of the affairs of her heart.

140

CHAPTER XIII

Life at Catherine's Court — Bestuchef s Proposal that she
should marry Gregory Orlof

A SKETCH of Catherine's personal appearance
at the time when she was signaUing, in the
manner described, to the French artists and
philosophers, may be taken from Anecdotes
of the Russian Empire in a Series of Letters,
written a few years ago from St. Petersburg,
by William Richardson, who was attached to
Lord Cathcart's Embassy —

" The Empress of Russia," Richardson writes,
"is taller than the middle size, very comely,
gracefully formed, but inclined to grow cor-
pulent ; and of a fair complexion which, like
every other female in this country, she endeav-
ours to improve by the addition of rouge. She
has a fine mouth and teeth; and blue eyes,
expressive of scrutiny, something not so good
as observation, and not so bad as suspicion.
Her features are in general regular and pleasing.
Indeed, with regard to her appearance alto-
gether, it would be doing her injustice to say
it was masculine, yet it would not be doing

141

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

her justice to say it was entirely feminine.
As Milton intended to say of Eve, that she
was fairer than any of her daughters, so this
great Sovereign is certainly fairer than any
of her subjects whom I have seen. . . . Her
demeanour to all around her seemed very smiling
and courteous."

From the same gossip we may take a picture
of a typical day in the life of the Empress,
given to him by "a very respectable old lady
of the highest rank " —

" Her Majesty, according to this authority,
rises at five in the morning, and is engaged in
business till near ten. She then breakfasts
and goes to prayers : dines at two : withdraws
to her own apartment soon after dinner :
drinks tea at five : sees company, plays at cards,
or attends public places — the play, opera, or
masquerade — till supper : and goes to sleep
at ten. By eleven everything about the Palace
is as still as midnight. Whist is her favourite
game at cards ; she usually plays for five
imperials (ten guineas) the rubber ; and as
she plays with great clearness and attention,
she is often successful : she sometimes plays,
too, at piquet and cribbage. Though she is
occasionally present at musical entertainments,
she is not said to be fond of music. In the
morning, between prayers and dinner, she
frequently takes an airing, according as the
weather admits, in a coach or sledge. On
142

COURT LIFE

these occasions, she has sometimes no guards,
and very few attendants ; and does not choose
to be known or saluted as Empress. It is in
this manner that she visits any great works
that may be going on in the city or in the
neighbourhood. She is fond of having small
parties of eight or ten persons with her at
dinner ; and she frequently sups, goes to
balls, or masquerades, in the houses of her
nobility. When she retires to her palaces in
the country, especially to Tsarskoseloe, she
lives with her ladies on a footing of as easy
intimacy as possible. Any one of them who
rises on her entering or going out of a room
is fined in a rouble : and all forfeits of this
soi't are given to the poor."

One may add Richardson's representation
of Catherine as the Mother of her People,
superintending the proceedings of her Senate.
The East and the West — the primitive and the
sophisticated — come into clashing contrast in
the picture —

" All the deputies have gold medals, as
badges of their office, fastened to their breasts ;
and as they come here from the remotest parts
of the Empire, the variety of their dresses and
appearance is very whimsical and amusing. —
I have several times heard the following
anecdote of the two Samoyed deputies. I
give it you as nearly as possible in the very

148

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

words in which I have heard it. The Empress
asked them to suggest such laws as they appre-
hended would promote the welfare of their
nation. One of them replied that they had
very few laws, and did not desire any more.
' How ! ' said the Empress. ' Have you no
crimes ? Are there no persons among you
guilty of theft, murder, or adultery ? If you
have crimes, you must have punishment ; and
punishment supposes law.' ' We have such
crimes,' answered the deputy, ' and they are
duly punished. If one man puts another to
death unjustly, he also must suffer death.'
Here he stopped ; he thought he had said
enough. ' But what,' resumed Her Majesty,
* are the punishments of theft and adultery ? '
' How ! ' said the Samoyed, with a good deal
of surprise. ' Is not detection sufficient punish-
ment ? ' "

That is how things appeared to one who
was not privileged to see them at very close
quarters. If the Semiramis of the North figures
in it, the Messalina of the North does not ;
and there is even a suggestion in it of Beranger's
King of Yvetot — se levant tard se couchant
tot ; and we know, from other sources, that
when Catherine rose at this early hour, she
lighted her own fire, so as not to give trouble.
But of course there was a good deal to be
seen that was not visible to Richardson's eyes.
If Messalina, in all her glory, was not yet con-
144

ORLOF AND PONIATOWSKI

spicuous, these, at any rate, were the years
in which " favouritism " was being estabhshed
on a firm basis as a regular Russian institution.
The Ambassadors observed that, if Richardson
did not. It was one of the things which they
were sent to St. Petersburg to observe ; and
their dispatches, from this time forward, are
full of reports concerning Catherine's prefer-
ences for this, that, and the other courtier.
Naturally, seeing that the preferences often
had, and always might have, a very practical
bearing on international politics. In par-
ticular, the Ambassadors kept a close eye on
Gregory Orlof, and speculated as to whether
he would or would not definitely " cut out "
Poniatowski.

He did so, but not instantly, and not with-
out a struggle. Poniatowski was a very
devout lover ; and Catherine's attachment to
him, in the face of political opposition, made
her, for a season, a heroine of romance in the
eyes of the Russian Court. Evidently she
was faithful to him up to a point — and very
likely she continued to speak of him as the
only man she had ever really loved long after
Gregory Orlof had come on the scene and
tempted her to " consolatory adventures."
She certainly continued in sentimental corre-
spondence with him long after she had given
him a rival, and ridiculed Gregory Orlof's
pretensions long after she had accepted his
addresses. Poniatowski, therefore, had grounds
K 145

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

for hope, even after Catherine's accession, and
some reason to expect that he would be sum-
moned to her side.

But Catherine had to choose ; and her
choice was not quite free. We have seen
Gregory Orlof's boast that he and his brothers,
holding the Guard in the hollow of their hands,
could depose her, if they wished, as easily as
they had deposed her husband. To have
favoured Poniatowski would have been the
one certain way of tempting him to try his
strength ; and we cannot even be sure that
Catherine needed that argument to decide her.
The battle for her regard was between a senti-
mental man and a strong man ; and the strong
man had risked his life to forward her am-
bitions. Though she knew his limitations, he
must have dazzled and delighted her. One
imagines him fascinating her, much as a hand-
some chorus-girl sometimes fascinates a man
of education and refinement. At any rate,
though she cherished a tenderness for Ponia-
towski, and promised to do her best to bring
about his election as King of Poland, she also
said a sentimental good-bye to him, much in
the tone of the girl who promises to be a sister
to the man whom, for imperative reasons, it is
impossible for her to marry.

" The state of excitement here," she wrote
to him, " is terrible. Your arrival here would
increase it, so please do not come. ... A
146

ORLOF AND PONIATOWSKI

regular correspondence with you would be
very inconvenient. I have to be very careful
of appearances, and I have no time to write
love-letters which might cause unfortunate com-
plications. I will do whatever I can for you and
your family — you may rest assured of that;
but it is necessary for me to be very, very
careful."

So Poniatowski accepted the inevitable,
though not without resistance. He pleaded his
cause in many letters, — now passionate, now
petulant, — being as deeply in love as any man
could be ; but he consented at last to pass sorrow-
fully out of Catherine's life, bribed by the offer
of a throne which he did not particularly want ;
and M. de Breteuil, who, though he was not in
Catherine's confidence, could draw his own con-
clusions, reported to his Government —

'' I do not know what will be the outcome of
the Empress's correspondence with M. Ponia-
towski ; but I think there is no longer room for
doubt that she has given him a successor in the
person of M. Orlof, whom she appointed to be
a Count on the day of her coronation. He is a
very handsome man. He has been in love with
the Empress for years ; and I well remember
the day when she pointed him out to me as
an absurd person, and laughed at his ridiculous
passion. However, he has earned the right to
be treated more seriously. He is a perfect fool,

147

COMEDY OP CATHERINE THE GREAT

people tell me ; though, as he speaks no word of
any language but Russian, I have some difficulty
in judging for myself."

And then, in a subsequent dispatch —

" A few days ago they produced a Russian
tragedy at the Court, and this favourite (Orlof)
played the principal part very awkwardly. The
Empress, however, was so charmed with the graces
of the actor that she sent for me several times
to talk about him and ask me what I thought of
him. With the Comte de Mercy (the Austrian
Ambassador) she did not even stop at that. He
was sitting next to her ; and she drew his atten-
tion enthusiastically, again and again, to Orlof's
good looks and aristocratic bearing."

There clearly were no doubts lingering in
M. de Breteuil's mind when he wrote that
second letter ; and there were no grounds for
any. Gregory Orlof had definitely conquered.
Catherine's feelings for him had passed through
three stages. She had begun by laughing at him.
She had proceeded to apologise for him. " I
know," she said to M. de Breteuil, " that these
people are quite uneducated, but I owe my
position to them. They have both honesty and
courage, and I am confident that they will not
betray me." Now she let her fascination be seen,
and called upon all the world to be fascinated
with her.
148

GREGORY ORLOF

Nor was that all. Encouraged by her old
friend Bestuchef, she even entertained for a
while the idea of marrying Gregory Orlof.

Bestuchef, it will be remembered, had been
sent to his estates in connection with a plot in
which Catherine herself might have been impli-
cated if the compromising papers had not been
burnt in time. Peter did not recall him ; but
Catherine, of course, lost no time in doing so.
She gave him a liberal pension, and a seat in the
Senate ; but, for whatever reason, she did not re-
store him to his old supreme place in the councils
of the nation. He was growing old. The new
men had stronger claims, and it may be that she
had never quite forgiven him for his rude treat-
ment of her in the days when she was a mere girl,
not worth conciliating. It may be, too, that she
thought him less trustworthy, or less competent,
than Panin. Whatever the explanation, he was
dissatisfied, and, conceiving that he might find
Gregory Orlof more amenable than Catherine, he
buttonholed him, and whispered in his ear —

" Gregory Gregorovitch, it is to no purpose
that Catherine has given you her heart unless
she presents you with her hand. . . . She can-
not worthily reward you but by giving you a
share in that throne which she owes to your
prowess. Indeed, why should she refuse it ?
Who is better able than you to support that
throne against all attempts of conspirators to

149

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

overthrow it ? Who would be more agreeable
to the sovereign ? . . .

" I am sensible, however, that it might not
be proper for you to make the proposal.
Obstacles might probably be thrown in your way
with which your delicacy would forbid you to
contend. A refusal might occasion you a mutual
perplexity. Trust yourself to my long experi-
ence and my friendship. I shall contrive to
determine the Empress herself to offer you her
crown."

Or words to that effect — for, of course,
there were no reporters present to take down
the words actually used ; and one can under-
stand how Gregory Orlof was impressed by such
advice from such a quarter. Intellectually, he
was not brilliant ; but he was brave as a lion and
vain as a peacock. Distinguished by the Empress,
and flattered by the most experienced of her
councillors, he was easily persuaded that he
need set no bounds to his ambition, but would
adorn a throne. At the same time, he knew
that he was a parvenu who must walk warily,
because his progress was sure to be watched
by many jealous eyes. A subaltern of the
Guards, with the manners not of a subaltern but
of a sergeant-major, can easily make enemies
among officers of higher rank and nobler birth
by the mere act of succeeding too well in life.
So he was the very man to be exploited by a
cunning statesman, and to consent to lie low
150

BESTUCHEF'S PLAN

and say nothing — not trusting himself to say
anything to the point — while the statesman
worked out a plan for his advancement.

And Bestuchef had already formed his plan.
He had formed two plans, in fact ; and he pro-
ceeded to set the machinery in motion for their
accomplishment. Associated with him in his
scheme was Vorontsof, the uncle of Princess
Dashkof, and Grand Chancellor of the Empire.

151

CHAPTER XIV

The Search for Precedents — The Failure to find any — Objec-
tions of the Senate^ — Gregory Orlof established in the
Post of Favourite

The first plan was to find, and proclaim, a
precedent.

In the case of an Emperor there would, of
course, have been no difficulty. Russian history
bristled with precedents for the union of a
Russian Emperor with the humblest and least
reputable of his subjects. The precedent of
Michael, already mentioned, who summoned
the daughters of the nobility to his Palace,
bidding them bring their night-gowns, in order
that, after careful review of their charms, the
most charming of them might be chosen as
his bride, would have sufficed. So would the
precedent of Peter the Great marrying the kept
mistress of one of his generals. The precedents,
in short, were so numerous and well known
that it would not have been worth while to
cite them. But the case of an Empress was
different. Jealousies of more moment were
there involved ; and there was only one pre-
cedent— and that a doubtful one — avail-
152

THE SEARCH FOR PRECEDENTS

able : the Empress Elizabeth's supposed secret
marriage with Razumofski — the precentor of the
imperial chapel.

It was not quite certain that she had married
him. He was a discreet man, not given to boast-
ing, who now lived in retirement, and spent
his time in reading the Bible. The proofs of
the marriage (supposing that there had been
a marriage) were, however, believed to be
in his hands. The question was whether (sup-
posing them to exist) they could be got from
him; whether he could be induced to revive
the memory of an old romance, and admit
that his imperial mistress had made an honest
man of him. Vorontsof undertook to try. He
called on Razumofski, whom he found sitting
by the stove reading the Bible, and told him
what he wanted, , and why he wanted it. He
showed him the decree which he had prepared,
publicly recognising him as the husband of the
late Empress, and raising him to the rank of
Imperial Highness.

Razumofski took the decree from him, and
read it carefully. Then he rose, crossed the
room, and opened the door of an old oak
cabinet, from which he took a casket of ebony
and silver. He unlocked the casket, and with-
drew a roll of parchment tied up with a faded
pink ribbon. He untied the ribbon, and pro-
ceeded to examine the parchment. All this
without speaking a word ; while Vorontsof sat
facing him, believing that he had gained his end.

153

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

But he had not. When he had carefully
run his eye over all the sheets, Razumofski
rolled them up again — but he did not hand the
roll to Vorontsof. On the contrary, he first
pressed it to his lips, while the tears glistened
in his hollow eyes and ran down his withered
cheeks, and then, still without speaking, he
once more crossed the room to the corner where
a lamp was burning before a sacred icon. Then,
with his eyes steadily fixed upon Vorontsof,
he thrust the roll of parchment into the flame,
and held it there until it was consumed to ashes.
Something in his look forbade Vorontsof to in-
terfere ; and when the work of destruction was
done, Razumofski sank, with a sigh of relief,
into a deep chair, and spoke —

" I have never been anything but the most
humble slave of Her Majesty the Empress
Elizabeth. I ask only to be the humble ser-
vant of her present Majesty. Pray beg her
to continue the manifestations of her goodwill
towards me."

So the first plan failed: The proofs having
perished, the precedent could not be cited ;
and Bestuchef was thrown back upon his second
plan — the organisation of a petition from the
Russian people to the Empress to call one of
her subjects to the throne as her consort. He
succeeded in getting a certain number of sig-
natures— some bishops and some general officers
154

PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE

were among those who signed ; but the signa-
tories were not the only persons who had a
voice in the matter. The cry arose on all
sides that this sort of thing would never do.

Gregory Orlof s fellow-conspirator, Hetrof,
voiced the discontent for one, declaring, accord-
ing to Princess Dashkof, that " he would be
the first to plunge his sword into the heart of
Gregory Orlof, though certain that his own
death would be the consequence, rather than
submit to the humiliation of acknowledging
him for his sovereign, and of witnessing his
country's disgrace, as the only result of their
late patriotic exertions." Panin, as sagacious
as he was obese, was equally firm, though less
dramatic. A Grand Duchess, he said, might
please herself in the bestowal of her hand, but —
" a Madame Orlof can never be Empress of
Russia " ; and when the project was brought
forward for discussion in the Senate, one of
the more aged of the senators did not scruple
to speak his mind plainly to Catherine's
face —

" Since I see that none of my colleagues is
willing to say what he thinks, then I will do so.
Your Majesty will permit me to remark that,
while we are delighted to see our sovereigns
select subjects on whom to confer their favours
and affections, we can never consent that men
who are socially no more than our equals should
presume to become our masters."

155

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

Whether that utterance, or Hetrof s threat,
or Panin's more diplomatically expressed objec-
tion was the decisive factor does not matter.
Between them, they produced their effect, and
compelled Catherine to realise that there were
lengths to which she must not go. It is doubtful,
indeed, whether she had ever keenly desired to
promote her lover to the rank of partner of her
throne ; and when she found the agitation so
intense that it was necessary to post sentries
at Orlof's door for his protection — and when
there were stories of attempts to lure the sentries
from their post, in order that the conspirators
might be enabled to murder Orlof in his sleep —
she abandoned the design, affecting never to
have entertained it.

But she did not abandon it in Poniatowski's
favour, though it was reported in Paris that she
had done so, or would do so.

The rumour ran there that Catherine was
likely to abdicate in favour of the Grand Duke
Paul, and join Poniatowski in Poland. Mme
Geoffrin, whom Poniatowski had met in Paris,
and who corresponded with him as a mother
with her son, repeated the report to him, but
without believing it ; and he knew very well
that there was no foundation for it.

"It is six years," he wrote, " since I last
saw the Empress, and I have little hope of
ever seeing her again. It is a very cruel de-
privation for me; but I must make the best of
156

SORROWS OF PONIATOWSKI

it — just as I have to make the best of so many
things."

Six years since he had seen her ; and he still
loved her, and could love no one else! " Her
reputation," he wrote, " is still dear to me." He
defended it, insisting that she could not con-
ceivably have had any hand in the imbecile
Ivan's tragic death, expressing the wish that
she had wiser counsellors, and recalling the time
when she had admitted to him that advice was
necessary for her guidance —

" She used to acknowledge it. I remember
her saying, ' I feel the power over me of the
man whom I love. May God preserve you for
me — I shall be the better woman.' I heard
her say those words, and they were true. If we
could have a talk together, I could tell you
things which would convince you of it. ... I
would rather that she only put herself in the
wrong with me, and not with the public."

Whereto Mme Geoffrin could only reply
that if Catherine had indeed said such things,
no doubt she had meant them at the time, but
that it was to be feared that she had since ex-
pressed similar sentiments to other men ; and
Poniatowski had to make what he could of that.
For a moment he turned to Mme Geoffrin her-
self for consolation, and offered his heart to
her; but she did not forget that she was old

157

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

enough to be his mother, and contented herself
with laughing at him, and giving him good
advice —

" My dear boy, it is a fine present which you
offer me : the heart returned to you from over
the border. Anyone can see — I smile as I write
it — that you are very hungry for love. Very
well. Fall in love with me, if you want to ; but
don't fall in love — not deeply in love, at all
events — with anybody else. Love is a dangerous
emotion for a king. You must amuse yourself,
of course ; but don't let your heart get seriously
entangled."

So the subject dropped, and Poniatowski
continued to love Catherine in vain, and from
a distance. He still loved her, as we shall see,
years afterwards, in spite of her willingness to
sacrifice him to political exigencies and de-
prive him of the throne and sceptre which she
had bestowed ; his throne being nothing to him,
and Catherine everything. . His enduring tender-
ness is a thing to be remembered, and the ex-
pressions of it must be set beside the colder
characterisations of the corps diplomatique in
any attempt to form a complete picture of her
personality. They show us something more
than the glittering sovereign who passed through
history like the central figure of a magnificent
procession; something more, too, than the
alleged Messalina of the North — a woman who
158

TRIUMPH OF ORLOF

boasted her two soul-sides, like the rest of us.
It was because of the second soul-side that the
tenderness of this dme sensible stood the strain
she put on it. One wonders what would have
happened if Poniatowski had had the nerve to
disobey her, and come to her. . . .

But he did not dare ; and therefore one con-
cludes that, if he had dared, he would have dared
in vain. He was a Man of Sentiment, engaged
in unequal conflict with a Man of Gallantry ; a
Man of Charm, against whom a Strong Man had
pitted himself. The Strong Man prevailed, as
Strong Men are apt to do. He did not prevail
altogether, as we have seen. He could not
persuade Russia that he would be an acceptable
Russian Emperor. He failed even, at that time,
to secure the dignity of a Prince of the Holy
Roman Empire ; ^ for even Catherine felt that
the line must be drawn somewhere, and that
there were some honours of which Guardsmen
with the rough manners of sergeant-majors were
unworthy — a prejudice which we may perhaps
attribute to her German origin and her German
ideas about caste. But other honours — and
innumerable ofBces — were showered upon him.
He was offered the command of the Engineers,
the Horse Guards, and the Artillery; he was
placed in charge of the Colonisation and
Fortification Departments. A marble palace
was built for him, bearing over its porch
the significant inscription : " Constructed as a

* He got the coveted honour at a later date.

159

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

proof of grateful friendship " ; and both the
English and the French Ambassadors made
remarks —

" The more closely I observe M. Orlof,"
wrote Berenger, " the more certain I feel that
he is Emperor in all but the name. His free-
and-easy manners with the Empress impress'
every one — the Russians say that nothing of
the kind has been known in their country since
the foundation of the monarchy. Trampling
all etiquette underfoot, he publicly takes such
liberties with his sovereign as no mistress in
polite society would tolerate from her lover."

Nor did Catherine — as yet, at all events —
show signs of resenting those liberties. On
the contrary, she continued, as she had begun,
to bestow her bounties on her favourite on a
scale of barbaric splendour. He had nothing
to pay for board and lodging, and his pocket
money amounted to 10,000 roubles (£2000) a
month. From beginning to end, he and his
brothers between them are computed to have
drawn about 17,000,000 roubles (£3,400,000) from
the public purse ; and Gregory, beyond a
doubt, got a good deal more than his just
fifth share of that large total. He was also
assigned estates of the size of provinces, and
whole armies of serfs, to work on them with-
out payment, and so make them profitable. A
more personal distinction was the permission to
160

TRIUMPH OF ORLOF

wear in his buttonhole the miniature portrait of
his mistress and sovereign set in diamonds.

It did not matter in Russia quite as it would
have mattered elsewhere — the ambassadorial
reporters insist strongly upon that. Russia,
they point out, was accustomed to that sort
of thing — the Empress Anne had loved a groom
well enough to make him Duke of Courland;
so that precedents could be found for the
appearance of a Russian Empress in the role
of King Cophetua. Still, there were murmurs.
The ancient Russian nobility — such as they
were — did not like the idea of kicking their
heels in the antechamber of one who had so
recently been a subaltern of no importance — one
who, according to Frederick the Great's Am-
bassador, " had, in his time, sat down to dinner
with lackeys and artisans." Count Cheremeief,
the Court Chamberlain, did not see why he
should be called upon to escort the carriage
in which the ex-subaltern was privileged to sit
by the Empress's side. If Gregory Orlof had
tried to push himself to the front politically
as well as socially, there would, beyond question,
have been trouble.

But that, in spite of Catherine's solicitations,
he did not care to do, knowing his limitations,
and feeling more comfortable when he kept
within them. One is reminded by him of a
somewhat common type : the athlete who gives
up athletics, spreads abroad, and lets his
muscles grow flabby, content to bask in the
L 161

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

memory of the redoubtable achievements of
his youth. In vain did Catherine place him at
the head of various Commissions and Com-
mittees, and appoint him to preside over the
deliberations of the Senate. He accepted the
appointments — and, of course, the emoluments
— but he consistently neglected all the duties
attached to them.

His one notable appearance in the Senate
was for the purpose of opposing the election
of Poniatowski to the throne of Poland. It
is said that he rose in his place and swore at
Poniatowski, like the trooper that he was ;
but that intervention was due, of course, to
jealousy, and not to considerations of state-
craft. Poniatowski had been his rival ; and
magnanimity towards rivals — especially rivals
to whom Catherine had shown a soul-side which
he himself could not even have seen if it had
been shown to him — was not one of Gregory
Orlof's virtues. He seems to have been assured,
however, — and to have accepted the assurance, —
that there was nothing to be jealous about.
He withdrew his objections, and apologised.
That done, he neglected public affairs, and
devoted himself to the chase. He pursued the
bear — and he pursued the maids -of -honour.
*' All the maids -of -honour are at his beck
and call," writes another French diplomatist,
Sabatier de Cabres.

Sabatier does not write as a friend either of
Catherine or of the Russian people. He sums
162

TRIUMPH OF ORLOF

up the latter in very scornful terms. They
are for him barbarous babies playing at being
grown-up people — savages covered with a
varnish of culture and civilisation which only
serves to make them more ridiculous when
it cracks and shows the ugly stuff beneath.
Catherine, similarly, is an overrated ruler
who has pursued the bubble reputation by
the device of pensioning men of letters —

" Hence her renown for creative genius, all
the talents, firmness of character, profound
insight, sublime policy, and all that goes to
make a great sovereign ! But I dispute that
verdict, and maintain that it would be difficult
to have a sovereign more grossly deceived as
to the true interests of the country, or less in-
clined to follow up the attempts made by her
predecessors to consolidate the half-baked
material of which it is composed."

An unkind response that to the friendly
signals flashed from the window which looked
out upon intellectual Europe. But Sabatier,
though severe, shows anxiety to be just ; and
it is notable that while the Semiramis of the
North is no Semiramis for him, he is careful
to guard himself against writing her down as
a Messalina —

" Calumny," he writes, " has not spared
her moral character ; but it must be allowed

163

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

that, while not altogether above reproach, she
is very far from the excesses of which she
has been accused. Several intrigues prior to
the one which now absorbs her have been
attributed to her with some show of plausibility.
People even whisper under their breath that
she has permitted herself certain distractions ;
but there really is no proof of anything except
her three known liaisons with M. Soltikof,
the King of Poland, and Count Gregory Orlof.
Her passion for the last named is of an un-
paralleled description, and can only be explained
by taking account of the tenacity of her ideas.
At first she loved him to the point of idolatry ;
then she ran up against the hatred which her
favourite inspired, and he gained a position
in her obstinate mind which long habit must
have caused him to lose in her heart. I am
convinced that her love for him is much less
than it was, but that, without having declined
into mere friendship, it has given place to
the calm, secure attachment which comes with
age, after the failure of the resources of youth.
She is well aware of his frequent infidelities —
which, indeed, he is at small pains to conceal
from her. All the maids-of-honour are at his
beck and call. She knows it, and has demanded
explanations in terms outspoken to the point of
indecorum. He runs after every woman who
attracts him, pays her very little attention, and
stands on no ceremony with her ; and yet,
in spite of all that, I doubt whether any man
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TRIUMPH OF ORLOF

enjoys such a position as his at any of the Courts
of Europe."

That was written in 1772, when Catherine
was forty-three, and had been ten years on the
throne. It shows us very clearly that the special
reputation attached to Catherine's name was
not earned by her in her youth, or in a day.
It was, in her case, what Balzac calls " the
terrible love of the woman of forty " (and fifty,
and even sixty), which excited remark alike
by its violence and by its variability. Until
that date Catherine does not seem to have gone
a great deal further than her predecessors, the
Empresses Elizabeth and Anne. She had her
Empire to attend to, and she attended to it in
person, feeling only a moderate need of those
" distractions " of which we have heard the
Ambassador speak. It will be proper to turn
aside for a moment, and watch her attending
to it, before pursuing the story of Orlof's hard,
but unsuccessful, fight for the first place in her
affections — a fight which had, in fact, already
begun at the time when Sabatier de Cabres
declared that his unique position in her regard
seemed to him irrefragably established.

165

CHAPTER XV

Cathevine's Foreign Policy — The kidnappiiag of Princess
Tarakanof

Space forbids any elaborate analysis of Cather-
ine's foreign policy ; but its broad outlines
may be indicated. In all likelihood it was in
reality determined by circumstances, even when
it appeared to be determined by caprices and
whims ; but one does not search in vain for a
feminine note in its inconsistencies.

Catherine began by disclaiming territorial
ambitions. " I have already people enough
to make happy," she said, when there was a
proposal to incorporate Courland in her Empire.
" This little strip of territory would add nothing
to my felicity." Having said that, she pro-
ceeded to bear a hand in the partition of Poland,
and to wrest the Crimea and other provinces
from the Turks ; and her ultimate boast that,
though she had come to Russia without a dowry,
she had left her subjects the Crimea and Poland
as legacy is well known and often quoted.

Catherine, again, began by issuing a mani-
festo in which she denounced Frederick the
Great as her " mortal enemy," but changed
166

FOREIGN POLICY

her mind and opened her arms to him when,
going through her husband's papers, she dis-
covered a letter in which he paid her fulsome
compliments. From that time onwards, she
acted in conjunction with him, if not actually
as an instrument in his hands, with England,
more or less, as a third partner to the entente,
and France and Austria for her opponents. She
was not, indeed, a Francophobe of the school
of Peter, who carried Francophobia to the point
of serving a company of French comedians
with notice to quit St. Petersburg. On the
contrary, as we have seen, she looked to intel-
lectual and artistic France for sympathy and
"inspiration. But intellectual France was the
France of the Opposition. The relations with
official France were strained until a date with
which we need not yet concern ourselves. They
certainly were not friendly at the date at which
Sabatier de Cabres depreciated her intelligence ;
and meanwhile there had been interference
with Poland and war with Turkey.

The condition of things which made inter-
ference in Poland possible, and almost natural,
may be illustrated by an anecdote preserved
in J. B. Scherer's entertaining volume of Russian
miscellanies —

" There was, at the Court of Elizabeth, a
Pole named Novitski, remarkable as a performer
on the mandolin. On the death of the King
of Poland, he asked permission to depart ; and

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COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

he was asked why he wished to go. ' I am
a PoHsh nobleman,' he said. ' I hope, as any
Pohsh nobleman may, to be elected to the
throne.' ' And if, as seems possible, the choice
of the electors does not fall on you, what do
you propose to do then ? ' 'In that case,' he
replied, ' I hope to be permitted to return to
St. Petersburg and resume my duties as a man-
dolinist.' "

In a country in which even a wandering
mandolinist could cherish such ambitions, any-
thing might happen. What happened in this
case was the imposition of Poniatowski through
Russian influence to serve Russian interests.
It is impossible to say whether he was a more
or a less desirable candidate than the man-
dolinist, for the mandolinist was a dark horse,
and did not win. He was the irresistible candi-
date because he had Catherine at his back.
There were advisers who represented to her
that his qualifications were not very obvious,
seeing that he was only the grandson of an estate
agent in a small way of business ; but she would
not listen to their objections. "Even if he
were an estate agent himself," she said, " I would
still have him crowned ; " and her insistence
may be judged from an intercepted dispatch
to her Ambassador at Warsaw —

" My dear Count, be sure you look after my
candidate. I am writing this to you at two
1G8

FOREIGN POLICY

o'clock in the morning, so you may judge whether
I am indifferent in the matter."

And the candidate was duly elected, under
the pressure of Russian bayonets — a pressure
so vigorous that Russian officers actually sat in
the gallery of the Polish Chamber, and, leaning
down from it, prodded the Member for Cracow,
because his patriotic oratory displeased them.
Then, after an interval, but nevertheless as a
consequence, followed the first Turkish war.

Russia was not in the least ready for war.
Graphic stories are told in the dispatches of
Sabatier de Cabres and others of skeleton regi-
ments, inadequate commissariat, and artillery
hurried to the front in post carts and sticking
in the mud by the way. But luck and energy
prevailed. A competent general was found
in Rumantsof, who routed an Ottoman army
more than four times as large as his own. Fresh
territory was added to the Empire ; and the
Russian fleet made its first appearance in
Mediterranean waters, under the command of
Admiral Spiridof, who was placed, in his turn,
under the direction and supervision of Alexis
Orlof.

Those naval operations are not without an
element of farcical comedy. Catherine reviewed
the fleet before it started, and complained, in a
confidential letter to Panin, that she had seen
it fire all day at a target without once hitting
it, and that it manoeuvred more like a fleet of

169

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

herring-boats than a naval squadron. It took
five months to sail from Cronstadt to Minorca ;
and of the fifteen vessels which set out only
eight reached their destination — a progress which
affords an interesting precedent for a more
recent Russian naval exploit. It is no wonder
that Catherine dismissed Spiridof and applied
to England for an Admiral to take his place.
She was given Elphinston, who destroyed the
Turkish fleet with fire-ships in the muddy Bay
of Tchesme ; but the only achievement of the
expedition for which a Russian could take the
undivided credit was the kidnapping of the so-
called Princess Tarakanof .

That story is another of the many Russian
historical mysteries. It may not be altogether
possible, in relating it, to separate legend from
fact, but one may begin with the version of
the transaction set forth in Wraxall's Historical
Memoirs. He heard it, in 1799, at a dinner-
party in Berkeley Square, from Sir John Dick,
who had been British Consul at Leghorn at the
time —

" During the time," said Sir John, " that the
Russian Squadron lay in the harbour of Leghorn,
in 1771, Alexis Orlof, who was the Admiral,
resided frequently, if not principally, at Pisa,
where he hired a splendid house. One morning,
about eleven o'clock, a Cossack, who was in his
service and who acted as his courier, arrived at
my door, charged with a message to inform me
170

PRINCESS TARAKANOF

that his master, with some company, in three
carriages meant to dine with me on that day.
I accordingly ordered a dinner to be prepared
for his reception. When he arrived, he brought
with him a lady, whom he introduced to my
wife and to myself ; but he never named her,
only calling her Questa dama. She was by no
means handsome, though genteel in her figure,
apparently thirty years of age, and had the
air of a person who had suffered in her health.
There seemed something mysterious about her,
which excited my curiosity, but which I could
not penetrate. Considering her with attention,
it struck me forcibly that I had seen her before,
and in England. Being determined if possible
to satisfy myself on this point, as we stood
leaning against the chimney-piece in my drawing-
room before dinner, I said to her, ' I believe,
m_a'am, you speak English.' ' I speak only one
little,' answered she. We sat down to dinner,
and after the repast, Alexis Orlof proposed to
my wife and to another lady who was there
present to accompany him and the female
stranger on board his ship. They both declining
it, Orlof took her with him in the evening. . . .

" On the ensuing morning, when Orlof came
on shore, he proceeded to my house. His eyes
were violently inflamed, and his whole counte-
nance betrayed much agitation. Without ex-
plaining to me the cause or the reason of this
disorder, he owned that he had passed a very
unpleasant night ; and he requested me to let

171

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

him have some of the most amusing books in
my hbrary, in order to divert the lady who was
on board his ship. I never saw her again ; but
I know that, soon afterwards, she was sent by
Alexis in a frigate to Cronstadt, where, without
being ever landed, she was transferred up the
Neva to the fortress of Schliisselburg, at the
mouth of the Lake Ladoga. Catherine there
confined her in the very room that Peter iii.
had caused to be constructed with intent to
shut up herself in it. The lady unquestionably
died in that prison of chagrin."

So far Sir John. His narrative is, to some
extent, that of a man placed on his defence —
suspected, if not actually accused, of having
assisted Alexis Orlof to kidnap a helpless woman.
Wraxall listened to it with a scepticism which
he is at no pains to conceal ; and there are, of
course, striking additions to it from other hands,
purporting to solve the riddle of Princess Tara-
kanof's identity, and to unfold the drama of
her fate.

The so-called Princess, according to the
current gossip, was in reality the daughter born
of the secret marriage of the Empress Elizabeth
to Razumofski. She had in her possession, it
was declared, a will in which the Empress
Elizabeth named her as her successor, was
plotting to claim the throne, and had been
promised the support of the Turkish army,
and also of a considerable party of Polish mal-
172

PRINCESS TARAKANOF

contents — hence the necessity of capturing her,
by fair means or foul, and taking her to Russia.
Her death was due to a rising of the Neva, which
flooded the dungeon in which she was confined
at Schliisselburg, and drowned her. A subject
picture of her last agony, by the Russian painter
Flavintski, was exhibited in St. Petersburg in
1864 and in Paris in 1867 — attracting so much
indignant attention that the Russian Govern-
ment, even at that distance of time, thought it
well to search the archives and set forth an
official version of the incident.

It set forth, among other things, that Schliis-
selburg was not the prison in which Princess
Tarakanof was incarcerated, and that the flood
in which she was alleged to have perished
did not occur until two years after her death.
The statement, of course, can no more be
checked than can the official accounts of
any of the other tragedies of the Russian
prisons ; but there is a considerable literature
of the subject, by no means all of it official,
and the career of the unfortunate woman can
be traced, if not completely, at least sufficiently
to make a connected story.

She was not a daughter of Elizabeth, or
a princess of any sort or kind — Sir John Dick
was absolutely right about that. She was
an adventuress — neither more nor less; an ad-
venturess whose face was her fortune. Whether
she was the daughter of a baker of Franconia
or of an innkeeper of Prague is uncertain,

173

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

and does not matter. It is said that she was
brought up at Kiel until she was nine, and
was then taken to the East, and lived first
at Bagdad, and afterwards at Ispahan. It
is also said that a Persian prince became
her protector, took her to London (where Sir
John Dick supposed that he had seen her),
and there deserted her, and that she found her
way thence to Paris in 1772. Be that as it
may, it is in Paris that we first get definite
and undeniable information about her.

We find her there, in 1772, calling herself
Princess Ali Emettee de Vlodomir, and giving
out that she was the niece of a wealthy Persian
notable. She was very beautiful, and lived
richly, with two elderly barons, apparently of
German nationality, one of whom was under-
stood to be a relative. Many admirers were in
attendance, including Prince Michael Oginski
of Poland. Her relations with Poles were to
be her undoing, and that seems to have been
the beginning of them. Before very long,
however, her establishment at Paris had to
be broken up, because the Baron von Embs,
who passed as her relative, was unable to pay
his bills. It transpired that the Baron von
Embs was not a baron at all, but the prodigal
son of a Ghent merchant. He disappeared,
and Princess Ali Emettee de Vlodomir disap-
peared also, albeit in a different direction.
She too, it seems, had creditors, and was not
in a position to give them their dues.
174

PRINCESS TARAKANOF

At this point there is a gap in her career,
which cannot be filled up ; but after the lapse
of a few months we rediscover her at Frankfort.
She had changed her name, and was now a
Princess of Azof, heir to the throne of a princi-
pality under the protection of Russia. Any-
one who had troubled to search the Almanack
de Gotha, which had then been just four years
in existence, would have discovered that there
was no such principality and no such princess ;
but the Almanack de Gotka was not yet recog-
nised as the final court of appeal in these
matters, and the story of the adventuress was
believed. She flourished in the best of the Frank-
fort inns until the Duke of Limburg, fascinated
by her charms, installed her in his castle at Ober-
stein, and even proposed to marry her.

So far so good. The adventuress was within
an ace of becoming an honest woman, and
living happily ever afterwards. Unfortunately,
however, she was too expensive for her protector,
as fascinating adventuresses are somewhat apt
to be ; and when relations became strained
on that account, she turned her beautiful eyes
in the direction of Prince Radzivil, who was
then living at Mannheim.

He was a wealthy and hot-headed Pole, op-
posed to Russian interference in Polish affairs.
His estates had been confiscated, but he had
got away with a good deal of portable property.
It was believed that he carried about with him
twelve life-size statues of the Twelve Apostles —

175

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

all of solid gold — and paid his way by chipping
pieces off them as required. However that
may have been, he was rich enough for the
practical purposes of the adventuress ; and she
won his favour by whispering in his ear the
mysterious story of her relationship to the
Empress Elizabeth — adding that she had been
brought up in a convent, banished to Siberia,
released by sympathetic gaolers, and escorted
over the frontier to Persia.

We need not jump to the conclusion that
Radzivil believed that story ; but, whether he
believed it or not, he saw a means of exploiting
it to his advantage. He had already contem-
plated joining the Turkish army — he would
be a doubly welcome recruit if he brought
with him a pretender to the Russian throne,
in whose name a Russian insurrection might
be contrived. He took her away, therefore,
from her affianced husband, and conducted
her first to Venice, and then to Ragusa, en
route for Constantinople. It was while she
was at Ragusa, where the French Consul ceded
his house to her, that Alexis Orlof, who was
at Leghorn, heard of her proceedings. It is
said that she wrote to him, believing him to
be a man with a grievance, and likely to take
her side ; but, if that was her belief, it was
a mistaken one. Alexis wrote home for orders ;
and the instructions sent to him were that
he must bring the pretender, who was now
styling herself Princess Tarakanof, to Russia
176

PRINCESS TARAKANOF

at any cost, even if Ragusa had to be bom-
barded in order to secure her.

Before the instructions arrived, the Princess
had left Ragusa, and had once more changed
her name. She now called herself Countess
Pimberg, procuring money by selling spurious
decorations and titles, yet not raising enough of
it to satisfy her needs. The Russo-Turkish war
having come to an unexpected end, Radzivil
had no further use for her ; but she made the
acquaintance of Sir William Hamilton, and
tried to borrow from him. Sir William recom-
mended her to Dick, whom we have already
met, and who was a banker as well as a Consul ;
and Dick gave information to Orlof.

It was arranged that Alexis should meet
her at Dick's house. He not only met her
there, but made love to her, and proposed to
marry her and organise a revolution which
should place them jointly on the throne. She
fell in with his views, and a mock marriage,
believed by her to be a real one, was performed.
Then, of course, Alexis proposed to take his
bride on board his ship, telling her that he had
arranged a sham naval battle for her diversion.
He had also arranged that the guns should
fire a salute to her, and that the sailors should
receive her with shouts of " Vive I'imperatrice ! "
But that was the end of her illusions. When she
descended to the cabin, it was explained to
her that she was no wife, but a prisoner, and
that her ultimate fate would be settled after
M 177

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

the St. Petersburg police had inquired into
the rights of her case.

That is the Russian account of her capture ;
and the Russian account of her end is that
she was found to be in an advanced stage of
pulmonary consumption, and died in prison on
4th December 1775. Perhaps it is true. It is
a shade more credible that Princess Tarakanof
died of consumption than that Peter iii. died of
colic. The one story, however, aroused almost
as widespread a scepticism as the other ; and
the scepticism, this time, was attended with
an indignation which drove Alexis Orlof out
of Italy in fear for his life.

Catherine wrote to him to say that she
thoroughly approved of his conduct in every
particular. Whether he had acquainted her
with all the particulars — with those of the
mock marriage, for example — one may take
leave to doubt. His role in her reign — in
the first half of it, at all events — is that of the
man who did the dirty work ; and he may
very well have preferred to do it in his own
way, content to be judged by results. That,
too, may very well have been the line of the
officer who is said to have starved the adven-
turess in prison in order to induce her to confess
her guilt. Catherine, after all, was chiefly
concerned with results, and seldom showed
suspicion of her instruments. The throne which
she had ascended through violence was still
unstable ; and she had a good deal to think
178

PRINCESS TARAKANOF

about besides those affairs of the heart which
are commonly supposed to have monopohsed
her attention. It will be worth while to give
an account of some other troubles and interests
which occupied her before reverting to the
story of the fall of Gregory Orlof and the rise
of his rapid series of successors.

179

CHAPTER XVI

The Visit of Diderot — The Insurrection of Pugachef

One of Catherine's distractions at the time under
consideration was the visit of Diderot — the
most ready of all the philosophers to respond
to the signals which we have seen her flashing
to the intellectual world. The visit was not
altogether a success either from his point of
view or hers, but it presents features of lively
interest.

Diderot had not the polished cynicism of
d'Alembert, who concealed his fear of colic
beneath the plea of incapacity for the employ-
ment proposed to him ; nor had he the discretion
of Voltaire, who avoided disillusion by content-
ing himself with flattering the Empress from a
distance. He had the simple mind of a child
who believes that, if things are not what they
seem, then they must be better than they seem.
He had an enthusiasm which was ready to boil
over as milk does, and a disposition to make
himself generally useful. So when Catherine
sent him 50,000 francs, he decided to drive to
St. Petersburg to thank her for the gift.

Very possibly a " lively sense of favours to
180

VISIT OF DIDEROT

come " was one of the elements of his gratitude —
that, in fact, will appear as we proceed. But it
was by no means the only element. Catherine
had really made an impression on Diderot, and
he took her as seriously as he took philosophy
itself. He had rendered her some really useful
services by collecting works of art for her
galleries. He had tried, though unsuccessfully,
to render her a still greater service by buying
the manuscript of Rulhiere's piquant account
of her revolution which was being read aloud
at fashionable gatherings in Paris. He was not
one of those who gossiped about her family
affairs or wanted to know what she had done
with her husband, but was quite willing to
believe that whatever had happened could be
satisfactorily explained. For him, in short,
Catherine was, in very truth, the Semiramis of
the North — just that and nothing else ; and he
was persuaded that she was as anxious to listen
as he was to talk — as eager to learn as he was
to teach. He set out to her, therefore, as the
self-accredited Ambassador of Philosophy, ex-
pecting to be asked to complete Catherine's
education and show her how to govern her
dominions.

His friends were full of apprehension.
Diderot, they remembered, was the son of a
cutler, and was not used to Courts. Therefore,
they argued, he would commit gaucheries, and
would be shown the door. Things were not, in
fact, quite so bad as that ; but they tended a

181

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

little in that direction. Diderot was an un-
conventional philosopher, and Catherine was
an unconventional sovereign ; but their un-
conventionalities did not dovetail.

The trouble began because Catherine had
forgotten that Diderot was coming, and had
provided no lodging for him, so that he had to
throw himself on the hospitality of his friend
Narishkin. The trouble was accentuated when
he turned up at the palace in a rusty suit of
black, with the result that Catherine sent him
a gaudy ready-made costume, in order that he
might be relatively presentable. The trouble
was not altogether assuaged by his deportment
when received in audience. He had no intention
of being rude, but he was naturally incapable of
respect for ranks and persons. Consequently,
when he got excited, and the Empress did not
agree with everything he said, he addressed
her as " my good woman," and shook her by
the arm, and banged the table. Moreover, it is
in one of her own letters that we read that she
caused that table to be placed between herself
and the philosopher because of his incorrigible
habit of emphasising his points by slapping her
on the thigh.

The most unsatisfactory thing of all, how-
ever, from Diderot's own point of view, was that,
though he talked and talked, — he was sometimes
allowed to talk for three hours without interrup-
tion,— he niade no progress. He had come as
an instructor, and was received as an object
182

VISIT OF DIDEROT

of curiosity. He presented memorandum after
memorandum, advising the Empress on all
departments of her policy ; and none of the
advice was taken. The Empress said that he
seemed to her to combine the wisdom of an old
man with the ignorance and inexperience of a
child, and at last she snubbed him, saying —

" Monsieur Diderot, I have listened with the
most intense pleasure to the inspirations of your
brilliant intellect ; but the application of these
noble principles, which I assure you I quite
understand, though it would do beautifully in
books, would work out very badly in practice.
. . . You only work on paper, which puts up
with anything, and presents no obstacles to your
imagination or to your pen. I, a poor Empress,
have to work with human nature for my material;
and that is a much more ticklish business."

" And, after that," said Catherine, when she
told the story to the Comte de Segur and the
Prince de Ligne, " we confined our conversations
to questions of literature and morality."

The reports of those conversations, however,
have not been preserved ; and it only remains
to relate that Diderot decided to return to
France. The waters of the Neva,, which still
have an evil reputation in spite of the fact that
they have been blessed regularly for hundreds
of years, disturbed his digestive functions. He
suffered from colic, though not from that fatal

183

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

kind of colic which d'Alembert had feared ; and
he was also conscious that Russian functionaries
were jealous of him, and suspicious of his
revolutionary ideas. So he wrote the Empress
a farewell letter, in which he pointed out that,
though he had journeyed to her dominions as
the Ambassador of Philosophy, Philosophy had
not paid his travelling expenses.

The Empress took the hint, and sent a
servant to him with three bags, each containing
a thousand roubles. He had asked for less, but
he had hoped for more ; so that we find ex-
pressions of disappointment breaking out in
his letters home. To his wife he presents a
balance sheet in which he shows that, when
accounts are squared, he will only be £200 —
and perhaps less — to the good ; while he writes
to Mile Volland : " You need not be sceptical
about my eulogies of this astounding woman,
for I have received practically no payment for
them."

A comparison of the gifts received by Diderot
with those bestowed upon the Orlofs and others
may perhaps help us to measure the importance
which Catherine attached to philosophers and
favourites respectively. When, that is to say,
we get down to the bed-rock of largess, we find
the benefits of the Semiramis of the North dis-
tributed between these two classes of the com-
munity in much the same proportion as by
other sovereigns. All that one can say is that
her attitude towards both classes alike was
184

VISIT OF DIDEROT

more effusive than that of other sovereigns ;
though it may be to the point to add that her
grants to her lovers largely consisted of landed
estates and the peasants attached to them,
and that, if she had given Diderot an army of
ten thousand serfs, he would not have known
what to do with them.

Perhaps, too, Diderot would have been able
to do more for Philosophy and the practical
application of it to methods of government if
he had come to St. Petersburg at an earlier date,
when Catherine had only just begun to flash sig-
nals to the philosophic West, and was setting
to work at the reform of her dominions with
the vigorous activity of a new broom. She cer-
tainly meant well in those days, and was inspired
with noble sentiments copied out of the writings
of the best authors — notably Montesquieu and
Beccaria. Her famous Instruction to the Legis-
lative Commission, issued in 1767, is full of the
very noblest sentiments, albeit somewhat of
the copy-book order. " The rich," Catherine
wrote, " ought not to oppress the poor."
" Patriotism," she declares, "is a means of
preventing crime." " Our peoples," she pro-
claimed, " do not exist for our benefit, but we
exist for theirs."

With much more in the same tone. Nothing
could be better in its way ; but far less came of
it than might have been expected. Catherine
ran up against the Russian passion for talking
instead of acting — for shrugging the shoulders

185

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

and sa^ang " Nitchevo." Her Senate comported
itself like a schoolboys' debating society. The
reports of its proceedings are a ludicrous ex-
ample of verbose inadequacy to a great task.
It devoted six sessions to considering whether
the Empress should or should not be styled
" Catherine the Great, the Wise, the Mother of
her Country ; " and Catherine gave utterance
to her impatience. " I summoned you," she
wrote to the President, " to examine the laws
of the country, and you spend your time in
discussing my personal attributes."

Nor were the debates much more profitable
when the Senate actually got to its task of
examining the laws of Russia. We read that
a debate on the laws governing the rights
of merchants was interrupted in order that
Leon Narishkin might read a memorandum
on hygiene. We also read that another debate
was interrupted in order that a medical senator
might intercalate a puff of a remedy for chil-
blains. So the deliberations dragged on, and
the Ambassadors from the West observed and
smiled. They were described by the British
Ambassador as "a joke," and by the French
Ambassador as " a comedy." Catherine got
tired of them, and they ceased, leaving the serfs
still in slavery, and torture still a recognised
part of the machinery of the Courts of Justice.
Such reforms as were instituted were not legis-
lative but administrative, and even these were
disappointing.
186

^

PUGACHEF

He was believed. The acceptance of such
stories is the price which the Russian Govern-
ment has always had to pay for its dark and
devious courses and its policy of keeping the
masses in ignorance. The Cossacks came over
to Pugachef, with eleven of their officers.
The town capitulated ; the Governor was
hanged. The news of the success, spreading
like a prairie fire, brought other adherents — all
those who had grievances, and all those who
delighted in the prospect of loot. Pugachef
soon had fourteen thousand men under his
orders, and was strong enough to threaten
Moscow.

So it was civil war, — and civil war of the
bloodiest and most barbarous character, — a civil
war which shook the throne, though it did not
avail to overthrow it. The recital of its vicissi-
tudes would be a dull and hardly intelligible
business ; but one may mention one or two of
its atrocities and bizarre spectacular effects.
There is a story of a siege of Yaitsk, in whicli
the inhabitants were reduced to the necessity
of eating leather; and a story of a siege of
Oranburg, in the course of which the citizens
made a jelly of the skins of animals, and " pul-
verising it, made it into bread by mixing with
it a little- flour." One reads of the Governor
of a captured fortress being impaled alive,
and of an astronomer being lifted on to
pikes, " so as to be near the stars," and then
hacked to pieces by Cossacks. One also reads

191

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

of the pillage of innumerable country houses,
and the ruthless massacre of their inhabitants;
of a coinage bearing Pugachef's image and
superscription, and the motto Redivivus et
ultor ; of Pugachef's Court — with peasant girls
enrolled as maids-of-honour, compelled to curt-
sey to their Emperor, and whipped if they did
not curtsey properly ; and, finally, of Pugachef's
marriage —

" Although he had been married for some
years to Sophia, the daughter of a Cossack, and
had three children by his union, he had the
effrontery at Yaitsk to marry a public woman,
and celebrated his nuptials with all the bac-
chanal licentiousness worthy of the wife he had
espoused."

And, all this time, there was a price of a
hundred thousand roubles on Pugachef's head,
and Catherine's generals were marching here,
there, and everywhere, to entrap him. They
defeated him, and cut him off from his supplies,
and then his host melted away. As Castera
writes —

" Hunger, thirst, and awakening conscience
opened the eyes of his followers. As he was
prolonging his miserable life by gnawing the
bones of a horse, some of the principal of them
ran up to him, saying, ' Come, thou hast been
long enough Emperor.' He fired a pistol, and
192

■t9f///ie^^^^■e; ^i^e -^4^^2^

PUGACHEF

shattered the arm of the foremost ; the rest of
the Cossacks bound him, ran away with tlieir
prisoner over the desert . . . and sent a mess-
enger to the commandant of the place to inform
him of what they had done."

So they took him to Moscow, and then —

" The sentence passed on Pugachef was that
he should have his two hands and both his feet
cut off ; that they should be shown to the
people ; and that afterwards he should be
quartered alive. But this butchering sentence
was not fulfilled. By some persons it is said
that it was mitigated by a secret order from the
Empress. Others pretend that the executioner
was less inhuman than the judges ; and others
again affirm tliat it was by a mere mistake of
the man. However it may be, Pugachef was
first decapitated ; after which his body was cut
into quarters, which were exposed in as many
quarters of the town. Five of his principal
accomplices were likewise beheaded ; three others
were lianged ; and eighteen more underwent the
knout and were sent to Siberia."

That was the end of a rebellion which is said
to have cost Russia " the destruction of a great
number of towns and of upwards of two hundred
and fifty villages, tlie interruption of the works
at the mines of Orenburg, and the whole trade of
Siberia." Catherine affected to treat the matter
N 193

COMEDY OF CATHEKINE THE GREAT

lightly, and jested to Voltaire about " le marquis
de Pugachef." Her personal fearlessness at
such moments of emergency was one of the
elements of her greatness. The rebellion did
quite as much as the passive resistance of
Russian Conservatives to check her enthusiasm
for reform ; and it helped to keep her hands full.
It was not till about this date, when she was a
woman of about forty-five, that she allowed her
interests to be concentrated on the affections of
her heart, and astonished the spectators of the
affairs of her heart alike by her ardour and by
her mutability.

194

CHAPTER XVII

Intrigues against Cliegoiy OHof — His Supersession in the
Post of Favourite by Vasilcliikof

It has already been stated that Gregory Orlof
was unfaithful to Catherine, and made havoc
of the virtue of her maids-of-honour. The thing
was notorious, and all the Ambassadors knew
that Catherine was more jealous of her maids'
virtue than of her own. They reported that
she made scenes with Gregory on account of
his misconduct, and that the language in
which she publicly reproached him was " some-
what less than decorous." There were rumours,
too, that, when she complained in private,
Gregory knocked her about; and this was at
the time when Catherine was approaching
what we are now told to call " the dangerous
age."

There is no need to enlarge upon the
dangers of that age; but it is to be noted that
it does, in Catherine's case, mark an epoch,
and was not, in her case, a transitory period
of hysteria. No calm, that is to say, succeeded
to the storm ; and no point was ever reached at
which she recognised that youth was over and

195

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

age had been attained. On the contrary, the
autumn of her h'fe was occupied with efforts to
renew the spring, and was one of those autumns
which prolong themselves well into the winter.
It began when she was about forty-three, and^
did not cease until she died, well advanced in the
sixties.

She had never, it is true, boasted of being
a virgin empress ; but her love-affairs had
hardly been more miscellaneous than those of
her predecessor. Sentiment had been involved
in them, and they had been durable. It would
have been practically impossible for her, in her
position, to seek a consort among foreign princes,
and her people would not allow her to raise a
subject to the throne ; but her alliances, alike
with Poniatowski and with Gregory Orlof, had
been very much like marriages. She had not
been capriciously fickle, and the affairs of her
heart only figure incidentally in the narrative
of the earlier years of her reign. But now
that '' dangerous age " was upon her, and
with it came a more acute intensity of passion,
a more mutable caprice, and a desire for the
stimulus of variety.

In a humbler station, or in a Court with more
moral traditions, she would have found obstacles
in her path ; as Empress of All the Russias, she
found none. It was not merely that, as an
autocrat, she was free, within the limits explained,
to do what she liked, even to the extent of
flying in the face of public opinion — there was
196

INTRIGUES AGAINST ORLOF

practically no public opinion lor her to fly in
the face of. Ambassadors might smile, or even
chuckle — one of them,^ in fact, got into trouble
with his Foreign Office for filling his dispatches
with smoking-room stories about her passionate
propensities, to the exclusion of graver matters ;
but the Ambassadors did not count, and the
native atmosphere was entirely favourable to her
proceedings. We have seen her senators telling
her to her face that they were " delighted to
see their sovereigns select subjects on whom
to confer their favours and affections " ; and
we have not to look much further in order to
see her taking them at their word. For them
as for her, the office of favourite was a post in
the Civil Service. The most that a minister
ever tried to do was to subject the office to the
influences of ministerial jobbery, and arrange
thereby to have a friend at Court.

A story is told of an attempt to obtain
the office for Bernardin de Saint- Pierre, the
famous author of Paul et Virginie, who visited
Russia in 1764, with a scheme for founding a
New Republic on the shores of the Aral Sea ;
but that story may very well have been in-
vented by Bernardin himself in his old age,
or by Aime-Martin, his romantic biographer,
on his behalf. It is true that Bernardin speaks,
in a letter to the French Foreign Minister,
M. de Vergennes, of " the very particular kind-
ness shown to me by Her Imperial Majesty

1 The Chevalier de Corberon.

197

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

Catherine ii. " ; but it is not clear that the
kindness consisted of anything more than a
gratuity of fifteen hundred francs, and his
latest biographer, M. Maurice Souriau, declares
that there is nothing in his papers, preserved
at Havre, which confirms the legend.

Probably it is untrue. There is indirect
evidence to that effect apart from the fact
that in 1764 Orlof's supremacy was hardly
challengeable. According to Aime-Martin, when
Bernardin sat one day in Catherine's ante-
chamber, waiting for an audience, Orlof " passed
through it in his slippers and dressing-gown,
leaving M. de Saint-Pierre profoundly distressed,
and in a mood to sit down and write a satire
against favourites." That certainly does not
look as if Bernardin had ever been Gregory's
successful rival ; and we may fairly leave that
story and pass on to the time when real and
effective rivals arose.

The first of them was a certain Wysocki,
of whom one knows nothing in particular
except that Catherine smiled on him for a
season and then ceased to smile — and that he
was the nominee of Panin and others who
wished to see Gregory Orlof deposed from
favour. He emerged from the obscurity from
which he was so soon to return in 1772, at
the time of a terrible outbreak of the plague
at Moscow.

The plague had affected the Muscovites
much as the cholera affects the Calabrians
198

INTRIGUES AGAINST ORLOF

to-day. When they were not dying hke flies,
they were rioting like hooHgans, and super-
stitiously opposing every sanitary precaution.
They murdered the Archbishop ; they broke
into the hospitals ; they maltreated the doctors,
so that those of them who survived the assault
fled from the city. Mistaking an Italian dancing-
master for a doctor, they broke both his arms
and both his legs, and flung him out into the
street to die. The soldiers fled and the Governor
retreated before them. It was obviously neces-
sary to send a strong man to Moscow, to stay
the plague if he could, and to restore order in
anv case. It was decided to send Gregory
Oriof.

Whether Catherine wished him to go because
she was tired of being knocked about, or because
she desired the uninterrupted society of his
rival, is a matter of conjecture ; but the thought
at the back of the brains of her ministers is
clear. Most likely, they argued, Orlof would
catch the plague and die of it ; and, even if
he did not die, there was a very good chance
that he would fail and be discredited. They
had little faith in his competence, and they
knew his habit of neglecting his duties. They
expected him to return — if he did return — un-
successful, to find another favourite installed
in his place. In short, they planned his down-
fall.

But Gregory Orlof did not fail. Perhaps
he guessed what his enemies were planning ;

199

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

perhaps he did not need to guess, but reahsed
that much was here at stake, for himself as
well as for Russia. At all events, he pulled
himself together, as an old athlete sometimes
will when there is a sudden call on his energies
after he has got out of training, and allowed
himself to fall abroad. He dashed off, in-
stalled himself in the plague- stricken town, took
command of the situation, and issued edicts
right and left ; and all the luck was on his
side. He had the luck — for which his physician
took the credit — to escape the contagion. If
he did not actually stay the plague, he had
the luck to be present when the plague, after
carrying off 133,000 persons, was stayed by
the coming on of the cold weather ; and when
the death-rate dwindled, order practically re-
stored itself.

So he returned to St. Petersburg in a blaze
of glory, passing through a triumphal arch
bearing the inscriptions : " Orlof stayed the
plague," and " Such sons has Russia " ; and
Catherine's heart was once more his for a
season. The interim favourite sank again into
the obscurity from which he had been lifted,
and Catherine ./rote to Voltaire comparing
Orlof to Quintus Curtius and other heroes of
ancient Rome. Perhaps — though no precise in-
formation is available — she even signified that
she was proud to be knocked about by such
a man ; for she had little of the pride of the
purple in these matters, and was quite capable
200

INTRIGUES AGAINST ORLOF

of taking the tone of Moliere's heroine : Et sHl
me plait d'etre battu ?

Still, Catherine was at the dangerous age,
and Orlof had not learnt to be exclusive in
his attachments, and his enemies were as
jealous as ever, and showed no disposition to
disarm. They took a petty revenge on the
physician who claimed to have saved his life,
keeping him waiting two years for a small
indemnity for the loss of his clothes in quaran-
tine, and telling him confidentially that his
reward would have been much more prompt
if he had been less careful of Orlof's health.
They found a fresh excuse for removing Orlof
from Court, gave him a fresh opportunity of
making a mess of an important public service,
while they brought other admirers to Catherine's
notice during his absence.

That is how he came to be sent to Fokchany,
to negotiate a peace after the war with Turkey ;
and this time he was sufficiently blinded by
arrogance to play into his enemies' hands.
Though Catherine sent him off in great style,
with twenty-four liveried servants, in a sumptu-
ous coach which is said to have cost a million
roubles, he had the indiscretion to quarrel
with her at the moment of his departure by
proposing that ona of her ladies-in-waiting
should accompany him on his journey ; while,
on his arrival at the seat of the negotiations,
he comported himself with an insolence worthy
of Brennus and the Gauls. He quarrelled with

201

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

the Russian commander-in-chief, and threw a
plate of jam in his face. He quarrelled with
the Turkish plenipotentiary, and boxed his ears,
saying, in reply to all remonstrances, that that
was the only way of dealing satisfactorily with
such people. Then, for no ostensible reason, he
broke off the negotiations and retired to Jassy,
where he swaggered about in a coat of many
colours, embroidered with priceless diamonds.

His enemies needed no more. Catherine
was still attached to him. She was still prais-
ing him, in letters to Mme de Bielke, as " the
handsomest man of the day," and gushing
over Nature's generosity to him in the matter
of " good looks, intelligence, and heart, and
soul." But it could be represented to her
that such powerful subjects were a peril to
sovereigns ; and seductive rivals could be sought
out and introduced. The Comte de Manteuffel
was proposed ; but he " preferred a simple
and philosophic life to the glittering splendour
of a corrupt Court," and fled to his estates
in Livonia. Lieutenant Vasilchikof of the Horse
Guards was more amenable. Baron de Solms,
the Prussian Ambassador, reported his promo-
tion to Frederick the Great —

" I have just seen this M. de Vasilchikof,
and recognised him as a man whom I had
often seen before at the Court, where he was
lost in the crowd. He is of medium height,
about twenty-eight years of age, of dark com-
202

VASILCHIKOF

plexion, and tolerably good-looking. He has
always been very polite towards everybody,
gentle and timid in his manners, and he is so
still. He gives one the impression of being
embarrassed with the part which he is playing.
The Court, on the whole, seems to disapprove
of the affair. It causes a great to-do among
the family and friends of Count Orlof, who
are looking baffled, pensive, and dissatisfied. . . .
The Empress is in the best of tempers, always
gay and pleased with herself, and entirely
given up to festivities and dissipations."

A similar message was, at the same time,
transmitted to Orlof by one of his friends ; and
he conceived that this was a matter of much
greater urgency than his public duties. He
left the peace negotiations to look after them-
selves, jumped into a carriage, and galloped
the thousand leagues, galloping night and day,
which separated him from St. Petersburg. He
was expected and stopped — told that the quar-
antine regulations forbade him to proceed
farther at present, and invited to retire for a
season to his estate at Gatchina. It was the
estate which he had offered, at Catherine's
suggestion, to place at the disposal of Rousseau
on the ground that " the air is healthy, the
water is good, and the hill-sides environing a
number of lakes are eminently suitable for
reveries," and that " there would be plenty of
shooting and fishing."

203

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

Perhaps Orlof shot and fished — he certainly
was in no mood to engage in philosophic con-
templations, and walk " with inward glory
crowned." Catherine was afraid that his re-
veries would have violent ends, and caused a
new lock to be placed on her new favourite's
door, for the discomfiture of possible assassins ;
but that was a superfluous precaution. When
Orlof did get to St. Petersburg, and made the
acquaintance of the new favourite, he was very
polite to him, drove in the streets with him, and
only quitted his society in order to engage in a
drunken debauch. And, in the meantime, negotia-
tions proceeded, almost as between potentates,
concerning Orlof s future arrangements.

They were negotiations of which the issue
hung for some time in the balance. Vasilchikof
was a weak man, though he had the old families
of Russia for his backers. Orlof was a strong
man, though he had influential enemies. More-
over, Catherine's tenderness for Orlof had not
been entirely killed by his bad treatment of
her ; and her new passion for Vasilchikof was
little more than a passing caprice. The situa-
tion, therefore, was full of interesting possi-
bilities, of which the discomfiture of the new
favourite by the old one was not the least
possible. In the end, as we shall see, it was
solved by the advent of a third suitor — a suitor
who was clever as well as strong ; but a good
deal was to happen first, and we must pause
to watch the vicissitudes of the struggle.
204

CHAPTER XVIII

Marriage, Travels, Misfortunes, and Death of Gregory Orlof

It was never Catherine's desire to disgrace the
favourites whom she discarded. She preferred
to regard them as superannuated functionaries
who retired from the most dignified post in her
Civil Service. She liked to honour them on
the occasion of their retreat, and accord them
magnificent retiring allowances. She cherished,
and wished them to cherish, the most agreeable
recollections of her favour, and saw no reason
why those who had been her lovers should not
stoop to become her friends. As a rule, they
were willing to do so,

Gregory Orlof s case, however, differed in
some particulars from that of the others. His dis-
missal was not entirely due to personal reasons,
though personal reasons were factors in it, but
was in part contrived by a cabal, jealous not
of his privileges but of his influence. That is
one side of the picture ; and the other side of
it is coloured by his reluctance to accept his
deposition. For ten years he had occupied
the first place in Catherine's heart ; and pride

205

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

forbade him to yield it, without a struggle, to
another. He was not, indeed, a man to over-
turn a throne because an Empress had proved
untrue. Those enemies of his who feared that
were alarmed by an imaginary danger. But he
was a man to be indignant, to sulk, to spurn
proffered consolations with scorn, to assume
an air of injured innocence — to give, in short,
all the trouble that he could, and lose no chance
of making his mistress feel her cruelty.

The rumour ran in diplomatic circles that a
thousand soldiers were in his pay, and ready to
do anything for him; that all the archbishops
were ardent supporters of his suit ; that he had
entered Catherine's palace in disguise at a
masked ball, and that Catherine had fled for
refuge to Panin's apartment. Durand reported
those stories to his Government for what they
might be worth ; and many other stories,
equally circumstantial and more credible, have
been preserved.

Invited to resign his public offices, Gregory
Orlof declined to do so, saying that if the Em-
press wished to get rid of him, she must dismiss
him. Offered permission to travel abroad for
the benefit of his health, he replied that he was
not complaining of his health, and needed
neither medical treatment nor change of air.
Threatened with imprisonment at Ropscha, he
said that he would be delighted to entertain
Catherine even there, if she would deign to visit
him. Called upon to return the portrait,
206

FALL OF GREGORY ORLOF

framed in diamonds, which Catherine had given
him, he handed over the diamonds, but retained
tlie portrait, saying that he would only restore
it to the hand from which he had received it.
When Catherine sent him a roll of gold coins
fresh from the mint, he ostentatiously passed
on her gift to his friend General Pohlmann.

The incident was reported to Catherine in
the expectation that she would resent it ; but
she understood, and was melted to tenderness —

" My God! Aren't you satisfied yet?" she
is reported to have said. " You have achieved
your end — you have banished him from my
Court ; but you will never banish him from
my heart. I am going to send him another
and a more valuable present, which I hope he
will receive with a better grace."

And she sent him a service of silver plate
and a draft for fifty thousand roubles — gifts
which he did not throw back at her head.
Evidently her heart looked back, even when
her fancy strayed ; and presently she restored
her favourite to offices of which she had deprived
him, and his complete restoration to favour
seemed probable. But it did not follow ; and
Catherine is said thus to have announced her
candid programme to a confidante —

" I am under great obligations to the Orlof
family. I have enriched and honoured them.

207

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

I shall always protect them, and they may be
very useful to me. But my mind is made up.
I have put up with a great deal during the last
eleven years ; and I wish now to live as I like,
in entire independence. As for the Prince, he
can do whatever he thinks good : travel, if he
likes, or remain in Russia if he prefers — get
drunk, go hunting, or keep mistresses."

And Durand, who reports the confidence,
adds as a character sketch of Orlof —

" He is by nature a Russian peasant, and
that is what he will remain until the end. He
loves as indiscriminately as he eats, and can get
on just as well with a Calmuck or a Finn as with
a pretty woman of the Court. That is the sort
of clown he is. Still, he has a certain natural
intelligence, and means well. His great passion
is avarice."

That passion, at any rate, was gratified
abundantly. Gregory Orlof's retiring pension
was no less than a hundred and fifty thousand
roubles ; and he was given, at the same time,
the lump sum of one hundred thousand roubles,
and an estate with six thousand serfs attached
to it. Thus endowed, he accepted the suggestion
that he should go abroad, the title of Prince of
the Holy Roman Empire being bestowed upon
him at last in order that he might cut a figure
worthy of a deposed imperial favourite. A
208

FALL OF GREGORY ORLOF

footnote in Castera's Life of Catherine gives us
some idea of the sort of figure that he cut —

" He appeared at Paris in a coat all the
buttons whereof were large diamonds, and with
a sword having the hilt also set with diamonds ;
at Spa he quite eclipsed the Due de Chartres
(since known under the names of Orleans and
Egalite) and all the other princes there, and he
played for such stakes as frightened the most
intrepid gamesters. He afterwards made his
appearance at Versailles at a ball given on
occasion of the marriage of Madame Clotilde,
dressed in a plain frock of coarse cloth."

His first thought, that is to say, was to cut a
dash, and his second to express his contempt
for anyone who presumed to try to cut a greater
dash. One is accustomed to hear such stories
of the Belles Oteros and Lianes de Pougy of this
world ; and it is with them that Gregory Orlof
has, in the end, to be classed.

His jaunt, however, was a brief one. At the
end of a year we find him, after having reminded
Diderot of " a caldron always on the boil but
never cooking anything," back once more at St.
Petersburg, and once more on very friendly,
though not intimate, terms with Catherine.
She gave him a palace — an additional palace,
for she had already given him several ; and his
return gift was the famous Nadir Shah diamond,
for which he paid four hundred and sixty
o 209

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

thousand roubles. It still looked as if he might,
by such means, re-conquer (or re-purchase) his
old position ; for Catherine was still writing of
him (to Grimm) in terms of affectionate admira-
tion as late as 1776 ; but there were difficulties
too great to be surmounted —

" Prince Orlof," reports Durand to his
Government, " tells me that he has had a
singular explanation with the Empress, and that
he replied to her attempts to dissuade him from
his plans of foreign travel by saying that he
could no longer endure to see how his friends
and relatives were being persecuted, though no
complaint could be made against him except the
lack of that vigour which Nature had ceased to
vouchsafe to him."

There may have been something in that,
though Gregory Orlof was only forty-two. An
endeavour to make love to the Empress and all
her maids-of-honour simultaneously may have
prematurely aged even a lover cast in his heroic
mould. Moreover, his rival was now no longer
Vasilchikof but Potemkin. A rival of no im-
portance, that is to say, had been succeeded by
a rival who would stand no nonsense, and was
strong enough to bar the way effectively. He
shall be introduced more formally, and with
more particulars, in a moment. For the instant
it suffices to note that the Orlofs themselves
had presented him at the Court at which he was
210

FALL OF GREGORY ORLOF

to supplant and succeed the favourite, and that
Gregory, being supplanted, sought consolation
elsewhere, and fell in love with, and married, his
cousin. Mile Zinovief .

Catherine, it seems, was not altogether
pleased. She hankered, it appears, after
Gregory Orlof's sighs, even when she preferred
the ardour of a younger suitor ; desired the
experience of being loved in vain, and felt that
it behoved Gregory, as a loyal subject, at least
to keep single for her sake. One infers as
much, not unreasonably, from the fact that a
decree of the Senate nullified his marriage on
the ground that the bride and bridegroom
were within the forbidden degrees. But then
we see Catherine, her fit of resentment passed,
changing her mind, and making a display of
magnanimity, overruling the decree of the
Senate, and sending Princess Orlof a golden
toilet set as a wedding present. Bride and
bridegroom went to Switzerland for their honey-
moon, and were happy.

But only for five short years. Princess
Orlof was consumptive, and the malady made
rapid progress. Her husband took her from
place to place, to consult all the specialists of
the day ; but the most learned specialists of
that date knew nothing about consumption,
and could therefore do nothing for their patient.
Princess Dashkof met the wanderers at Leyden,
and again at Brussels. She says that Orlof
suggested to her that her son (then aged seven-

211

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

teen) should aspire to the post of favourite
from which he had retired ; but she was not a
truthful person, and one does not know whether
to believe her or not. However that may be,
the Princess gradually wasted away until she
died in 1782, and Gregory himself only survived
her about six months. It is said that his
enemies found a means of giving him a drug
which deprived him of his reason ; but that is
another of those stories, so frequent in Russian
history, which cannot be proved and need not
be accepted —

" Though I had every reason to expect the
painful event," wrote Catherine, conveying the
news of his death to Grimm, " I assure you I
am deeply afflicted by it. It is in vain that
people repeat to me, and that I repeat to my-
self, all the commonplaces proper to such occa-
sions. Sobs are my only answers, and I am
in a terrible state of distress."

So that, in spite of all that had happened,
something of the old tenderness remained.

212

CHAPTER XIX

Gregory Potemkin — His Early Life — His Militaiy Services —
His Promotion to be Favourite in place of Vasilchikof

Potemkin came from Smolensk, where he was
born, of poor but noble parents, in or about
1740. One of his great-uncles had been Peter
the Great's Ambassador at the Court of St.
James's ; his sisters married into the great
families of Samoilof and Davidof ; but his
father was an undistinguished officer, who saw
no active service, and retired with the rank
of major. He himself was intended for the
priesthood, and was to that end sent to a
theological college, where he became a model
pupil, well versed in his liturgy.

In this character of model pupil, well versed
in the liturgy, he was, together with other
model pupils, sent, at the public cost, to St.
Petersburg, to be "inspected." He did not
dazzle St. Petersburg, but St. Petersburg
dazzled him. It was borne in upon him, at
the frivolous Court of Elizabeth, that theology
was not the whole of life, or even three-parts
of life, but only one of life's minor issues. On
his return to his theological college, he treated

213

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

his studies with such contempt that his pre-
ceptors expelled him as "an idler who cut his
lectures." Retiring, he obtained permission to
enlist in the Horse Guards ; and that was
where the outbreak of Catherine's revolution
found him.

It was a revolution, as we have seen,
made by subalterns, with the countenance and
connivance of Panin and one or two other
Elder Statesmen ; and the subalterns forced the
hands of the Elder Statesmen by proclaiming
Catherine Empress instead of putting her for-
ward merely as Regent during the minority of
the Grand Duke Paul. Potemkin held only
non-commissioned rank at the time, but he
nevertheless contrived to make himself helpful
and prominent. It is said to have been he
who disconcerted the Elder Statesmen by
raising the cry : " Long live Catherine, Empress
of All the Russias ! " first in the barrack yard
and then again in the Kazan church. It
is also said that Catherine wore a cockade
torn from his cap when she took the field
against her husband. He was, at any rate,
one of her personal escort on that occasion,
and was with Gregory Orlof at Oranienbaum
when Peter iii. signed the Act of Abdication,
and rode with the carriage which conveyed
Peter to his prison at Ropscha. His reward
was the grade of second lieutenant, and a Court
sinecure, carrying with it a pension of two
thousand roubles. The fact that he was first
214

POTEMKIN

proposed for the rank of cornet only, and that
Catherine herself declared the promotion in-
adequate, shows that she had remarked him,
and did not accept him merely at the Orlofs'
valuation.

Somehow or other, he was granted ad-
mission into that inner circle in w^hich the
Empress unbent, and permitted her male
friends to call her by her Christian name. It is
said that the Orlofs themselves presented him as
a buffoon with a remarkable turn for mimickry
— the very thing to beguile an idle hour. It is
also said that he mimicked the Empress to her
face, to her intense amusement, and that she
thereupon granted him permission to call her
Catherine, like the others. It is added that the
Orlofs soon became jealous of their protege,
observing that the Empress permitted him to
squeeze her hand in the course of parlour
games ; that they picked a quarrel with him
in the billiard-room, and that the unconscion-
able Alexis knocked his eye out with the cue.
The fact that he lost one of his eyes somewhere,
in a rough-and-tumble with somebody, is, at any
rate, well established.

Beyond that, however, one knows very
little about his early life, and can add but few
touches to the picture of him as a young man
who hung about the Court, calling the Empress
by her Christian name, and earning his bread
by his buffooneries, while awaiting his turn
for preferment. It has been said that he made

215

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

a bid for preferment by assisting at the death
of Peter iii. ; but that he always strenuously
denied. Tiiere is probably more truth in
the statement that Catherine prepared him for
preferment by appointing a French nobleman
as his tutor, and placing him in a Government
office, to familiarise him with public affairs.
That was the sort of thing she liked to
do ; and Potemkin, unlike Gregory Orlof, was
both young enough and far-sighted enough to
let her do it. Buffoon or not, he must have
been recognisable as a young man who would
make his way ; though it was not until the
outbreak of the Turkish war, in 1768, that he
began to emerge.

His rank was only that of captain when he
went to the front with a special recommenda-
tion to Romanzof. Within a few months we
find him promoted to be a major-general " on
account of his courage and the great military
abilities which he has displayed on all occasions."
What he had actually done to merit the pro-
motion is not clear. The theory that the
commander-in-chief, reading between the lines
of Catherine's letter of recommendation, and
divining that the young captain might be a
useful friend at Court, put him in the way of
winning distinctions without incurring perils,
is more plausible than any other ; but there
is also the theory that he acted as a Court spy
at the military headquarters, and sent home
secret reports to the detriment of his superiors.
216

POTEMKIN

His successes, at any rate, were ratlier like
a flash in the pan. From the end of 1769
until the middle of 1773 we hear practically
nothing of him ; and Laveaux writes that
" he spent all his time in his dressing-gown,
with the air of a man wrapped in profound
reflection."

It seems a queer uniform, and also a queer
occupation, for a major-general on active ser-
vice ; but everything was possible in the mili-
tary Russia of that date, and we are not entitled
to be more than mildly sceptical. The com-
mander-in-chief may very possibly have pre-
ferred the coadjutor who sulked in flowing silks
to that other, more haughty, coadjutor who
pelted him with jam ; and it is, at any rate,
pleasant to picture him balancing their com-
parative claims to his affection and regard.
Whatever his choice, however, Catherine had
made hers ; and the major-general in the
dressing-gown was presently cheered by the
receipt of a letter in her handwriting.

" My dear lieutenant-general," she began,
thus signifying his elevation to a higher grade ;
and she went on —

" I suppose you are too busy wuth your
duties in Silistria to have time to read letters.
I do not know how^ you are getting on with
your bombardment ; but I am quite sure that
your activities are due to personal loyalty to
myself, and to that dear fatherland which you

217

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

delight to serve. Still, as I should be very
sorry to lose the services of any man of zeal,
courage, intelligence, and ability, I implore you
not to expose yourself to unnecessary danger.
Perhaps, when you have read this letter, you
will wonder why I wrote it. Then I will tell
you. It was in order to let you know how
highly I think of you, and how sincerely I am
your well-wisher."

Though the letter said but little, it obviously
meant more than it said. Potemkin, as was
natural, was startled by it out of his dressing-
gown into his uniform — startled into demand-
ing leave of absence and setting out on a journey
which could not very well be accomplished in
a dressing-gown. By the middle of January
1774 he was back in St. Petersburg, after
travelling with a haste equal to Orlof's, when
the news reached him of the favours bestowed,
in his absence, on Vasilchikof ; but, as to the
next scene in the comedy, more than one story
is told.

Some writers lay that scene in a monastery.
They say that Potemkin posed as the incon-
solable lover, resolved to shave his head, re-
nounce his uniform (and his dressing-gown) for
a cowl, and exchange the pomp and vanity of
this wicked world for the pious seclusion of the
cloister, because he feared that he had fixed
his hopes upon unattainable satisfactions. They
add that Catherine sent her confidante, the
218

POTEMKIN

Countess Bruce, to him in his retreat with a
reassuring message to the effect that he need
not despair ; that the Countess Bruce returned
with the report that love had driven him mad ;
that Catherine herself then went to the monas-
tery and declared her love; that Potemkin
only consented to accept her love on condition
that she would give him a rank so exalted that
the ridicule of the Court could not affect him ;
that Catherine agreed to his terms.

Things may have happened so — ^the negative
cannot be proved ; but there is more proba-
bility in the story that Potemkin himself
made a written application for the grade of
" general aide-de-camp " — the titular military
status of the imperial favourites. In any case,
whether he sought the honour openly, or so
manoeuvred that it was thrust upon him, he
obtained it, and entered at once on his new
duties. One may give Castera's picture of
those duties — or rather of that portion of them
which outsiders were privileged to observe —

" When Her Majesty had fixed her choice
on a new favourite," we read, '' she created
him her general aide-de-camp, in order that
he might accompany her everywhere without
attracting reproach or inviting observation.
Thenceforward the favourite occupied in the
Palace an apartment beneath that of the Em-
press, to which it communicated by a private
staircase. The first day of his installation, he

219

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

received a present of a hundred thousand
roubles, and every month he found twelve
thousand on his dressing-table. The marshal
of the Court was commissioned to provide him
a table of twenty-four covers, and to defray all
the expenses of his household. The favourite
attended the Empress on all parties of amuse-
ment, at the opera, at balls, promenades, ex-
cursions of pleasure, and the like, and was not
allowed to leave the Palace without express
permission. He was given to understand that
it would not be taken well if he conversed
familiarly with other women ; and if he went
to dine with any of his friends, the mistress of
the house was always absent. ... It was on
the selection of Potemkin that these formalities
began ; and since that time they have been
constantly observed."

The favourite, that is to say, lived .in a
cage, though the cage was generously gilded.
Discontent with the restrictions of the cage
was unquestionably a factor in the abbreviation
of more than one liaison, and it can hardly
have been without its bearing on the develop-
ment of Potemkin's own position. We will
consider that question, however, in a later
place. Before coming to it, we have to see
what the world said about the new man and
the new situation.

The Empress herself reported the change
in what we may fairly call a lettre de faire part,
220

POTEMKIN

addressed to Grimm, who had presumed to
remonstrate with her on the versatihty of
her temper —

" Why do you say this ? " she asked. " I
will lay a wager that I know. It is because
I have got rid of a certain excellent, but very
tiresome, citizen, whose place was immediately
taken — I really can hardly tell you how —
by one of the greatest, most droll, and most
amusing originals of this age of iron. Ah
me ! What a head my new friend has ! He
had more than anyone else to do with the con-
clusion of the Peace, and he is as good company
as the Devil."

That is how she announced the dismissal
of Vasilchikof, who had been sent to Moscow,
where he passes out of our story — 1,100,000
roubles to the good. Already, it will be seen,
she recognised not only Potemkin's social
qualities, but also his strength of character.
In diplomatic circles, also, it was felt that the
new favourite would have to be taken more
seriously than the favourite who had been asked
to retire. Durand, indeed, depreciated him,
reporting to Versailles that his conduct during
the war had scandalised the Turks and excited
the derision of the Russians — which, indeed, is
not unlikely if it be true that he spent two years
and a half on active service in his dressing-gown ;
but Gunning, the British Charge d'Affaires,

221

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

while speaking of his huge, ungainly form
and disagreeable physiognomy, added that " he
seems to have more sense than the majority
of the Russians," and " may reasonably hope,
thanks to his own qualities and the indolence
of his rivals, to reach the heights to which
his limitless ambition aspires ; " while Vasilchi-
kof himself admitted, in a burst of confidence
which reached the Embassies, that Potemkin
altogether outclassed him —

" He stands," he said, " on a very different
footing from me. I was only in the position
of a kept woman. That is how I was treated.
I was never allowed to see anybody, or to go
out alone. When I asked a favour, I got no
answer, whether the favour was for myself
or for others. Thinking I should like the
cordon of St. . Anne, I asked the Empress for
it ; and, on the following morning, when I
put my hand in my pocket, I found — notes
to the value of thirty thousand roubles. She
always shut my mouth like that, and sent
me to my room. Potemkin, on the contrary,
gets whatever he chooses to ask for. He
simply dictates his wishes. He is the master."

A generous testimonial truly from a defeated
to a triumphant rival ; but one suspects that
Vasilchikof was rather glad than otherwise to
be asked to go. We have read that he ap-
peared to be embarrassed by his part; there
222

POTEMKIN

is no record of his having appeared to be em-
barrassed by the 1,100,000 roubles which he
received for playing it. Potemkin's rise, indeed,
was far more annoying to Orlof than to him,
though the affability of their intercourse sur-
prised the corps diplomatique. They met one
day, we are told, on the grand staircase of the
Palace, and exchanged civil words —

" What is the Court news ? "

" I know of none except that you are going
upstairs, and I am coming down."

That is all that one knows to have passed
between them. They waved each other a
courteous farewell, and went their several ways.
Orlof, as we have already seen, departed on his
travels, returned to marry, and then travelled
again, pursuing the vain quest of a physician
who could cure his young wife of the disease
which was killing her. He never ceased to
be a person of great social influence and con-
sideration ; but he now passes out of our story,
leaving Potemkin free to follow the promptings
of his inordinate ambition, and make more
of the office of favourite than any of his pre-
decessors had ever contrived to make of it.

223

CHAPTER XX

Potemkin's Inordinate Ambitions — His Desire to Marry
Catherine — His Retention of his Public Offices after
ceasing to be Favourite — Rise and Fall of Zavadovski

Potemkin's ambition was nothing less than
to govern Russia — and to be seen governing it.
From first to last he was far more anxious to
rule the Empire than to embrace the Empress.
It may be an exaggeration to say that he only
embraced the Empress as a means towards
ruling the Empire ; but it is the sort of exaggera-
tion which is more illuminating than the truth.
He wanted to multiply and monopolise offices,
to stuff his pockets with roubles, to have vast
armies of serfs tilling the soil for his profit,
and to see his breast spangled with the stars,
crosses, and ribbons of all the European Orders
of Chivalry.

On the whole, he got what he wanted. His
serfs were like the sands of the seashore for
multitude, and the number of his roubles was
fifty millions. A scat in the Privy Council and
the office of Minister of War were his almost
at once. Other offices, both military and civil,
fell to him as he desired them ; and it was
224

POTEMKIN

much the same with the Orders — though there
were exceptions. When he asked for the Garter,
he found that he might as well have asked
for the moon ; for though there may be "no

d d nonsense about merit " in connection

with the Garter, it is not a distinction avail-
able for the paramours of Empresses. When he
asked for the Golden Fleece, he was met with
an equally firm non possumus, on the ground
that the Golden Fleece was only for Catholics.
But the King of Prussia gave him the Order
of the Black Eagle, the King of Denmark
the Order of the Elephant, and the King of
Sweden the Order of the Seraphim ; the Em-
peror of Austria made him, as he had made
Orlof, a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire ;
and Catherine gave him, as she had given
Orlof, permission to wear her portrait, set in
diamonds, in his buttonhole. "I do not,"
wrote the French Attache, M. de Corberon,
to his brother, " like this outward and visible
sign of a favour which ought only to be sus-
pected" ; but Potemkin was a man who set
great store by the visible signs of his advance-
ment.

It must be added, however, that he obtained
them by insistence, and not by cajolery. Since
he was Catherine's lover, she must be assumed
to have been in love with him ; but his appear-
ance and manners, in so far as we have been
made acquainted with them, were by no means
those of a squire of dames. He was one-eyed,
P 225

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

as has been said ; and with his one eye he
squinted. He was bow-legged, and had the
habit of biting his nails. He swilled kvass and
ate garlic. He frequently forgot, for days to-
gether, to brush his hair or wash his face ;
and he slopped about in a dressing-gown and
slippers — not even wearing trousers underneath
the dressing-gown ; and he gave audience to
notables — and even to fashionable ladies — in
that incomplete attire. Decidedly, he was not
a decorative lover — a fact to which he himself
bore silent testimony by his reluctance to have
his portrait painted ; and we shall find it difficult,
as we proceed, to infer any special beauty of
character from the records of his conduct. But
he was a strong man ; and Catherine, great as
she was, had many feminine traits. As, in the
past, she had allowed herself to be knocked
about by Orlof, so now she allowed herself to
be ordered about by Potemkin. He was so
encouraged that he presumed, even as Orlof
had done, to persuade her to try to bestow
her hand where she had already bestowed her
heart.

His method of procedure, however, was
different from Orlof's. Whereas Orlof had had
backers, Potemkin acted for himself ; and where-
as Orlof had relied upon political considera-
tions, Potemkin's trump card was religious —
as perhaps was natural in the case of a man
educated in a theological college. He induced
Catherine to accompany him on a pilgrimage
226

POTEMKIN

to the monastery of Troitza, near Moscow ; and
he contrived that Panin — whose opposition he,
like Orlof, feared — should not be of the party.
That done — and Panin, being now fatter than
ever, was left behind without difficulty — he set
his scene and played his comedy, with the help
of the monks, who, in view of his early ecclesi-
astical associations, were his cordial supporters
to a man.

As the curtain rises, Catherine is discovered
alone — whether engaged in prayer or awaiting
the homage of the fathers does not matter. . To
her presently there enter shaven monks, with
words of pious remonstrance on their lips. Some
of them implore, and others threaten ; but the
burden of menace and entreaty is the same.
The Empress, they take leave to say, — may they
be forgiven for saying it ! but it is their duty
to her and to the Church, — is living in open sin.
The thing is a scandal, a stumbling-block, a
rock of offence in Russia. The Church cannot
approve of a union which the Church has not
been called upon to bless. The Autocrat of
All the Russias, though the Head of the Church,
is not above its laws. Like the humblest of her
subjects, she must marry (or separate from her
lover) if she does not wish to burn. Let her
take heed, while it is yet time ! Let her reflect !

And so on and so forth, with the audacity
of admonition of which privileged ecclesiastics
are sometimes capable, until the door opened
yet again, and Potemkin entered — quantum

227

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

mutatus ah illo ! Not in his gay uniform, glitter-
ing with decorations ; not even in his gay dress-
ing-gown of flowing silks; but in the dark,
monastic garb. His head was not yet shaven
— and very likely his hair was, as usual, long
and tousled — but he was, at least, a monk in
the making, if not yet a monk fully made ; and
the words on his lips were the words of pious
resignation. The Holy Father Superior, he
said, had spoken to him, and convinced him of
sin. It had been brought home to him that
the life which he was living was a continual
affront to God. He would not — could not —
continue it, but must repent, in sackcloth and
ashes, and make amends. Marriage, of course,
would be a sufficient reparation of his heinous
fault ; but he supposed it was impossible. If
so — if the Empress would not make him an honest
man — then the only way was for him to make
himself a holy man, resigning his worldly pros-
pects, joining his friends the monks, taking the
vow of celibacy, and devoting the remainder of
his allotted span of life to prayer and meditation.
It was a bold stroke, and — the fat Panin
being out of the way — there was a chance that
it might succeed. Catherine was not a religious
woman ; but she knew for how much religion
counted in Russia, and what support it could
give to any cause or proceeding. Moreover, the
convent provided every facility for a wedding
service, and she had acquired the habit of
doing as Potemkin told her. If she had been
228

POTEMKIN

seeking an excuse for weakness, she could have
found all the excuses that she wanted. But
she was not seeking one.

Perhaps, though she did not mind being
bullied, she did not hke being jockeyed. Perhaps
she was still afraid of Panin, who certainly was
not afraid of her. Perhaps she was beginning
to realise the mutability of her own restless
heart. Perhaps, after all, she was repelled
by the conception of a one-eyed major-general,
unkempt and redolent of garlic, slopping about
the Palace in a dressing-gown and slippers, or
squinting at her across her boudoir table, for the
remainder of her life. Perhaps, again, Potemkin
had postponed his comedy too long ; so that
Catherine's eyes had already begun to roam,
and her fancy to follow her eyes, and her heart
to follow her fancy. Perhaps she had already
begun to be sensible of the charms of Zava-
dovski. Whatever her motives, she made it
clear that, if comedies were to be played, her
own gifts as a comedienne must be reckoned
with. So she listened to Potemkin, as she had
listened to the priests, and waited for her cue,
and took it up ; but she said nothing about
marriage, confining her remarks to religion and
its obligations.

Of course, she said, religion must come
first. Her respect for religion had always been
profound. Far be it from her, therefore, to
urge a religious man to ignore the promptings
of his conscience ! If Potemkin felt as he said,

229

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

then it was only right and proper that he should
act as he proposed. The case was a sad one —
equally sad for both of them ; but sin was sin,
and duty was duty, all the same. She would
weep, but she would submit, resigning her lover
into the arms of Mother Church, rejoicing to
think that she had only a spiritual rival in his
heart. Since God called him, there was nothing
for it but that he should obey the call.

Such was her answer : and it was not at all
the answer that Potemkin had expected. Still,
he had invited it, or at least laid himself open
to it ; so that no effective rejoinder was possible.
He had been taken at his word, and he could not
complain. Catherine bade him an affectionate
and dignified farewell, and left him using
language most inappropriate to the holy garb
he had adopted. He cursed and swore. He
threatened to become an Archbishop, but he
thought better of the threat ; and it is an open
question whether he withdrew from the office
of favourite on his own motion, or because
Catherine signified her wish that he should do
so. By acting as favourite for a season, he had
driven in what Sainte-Beuve has called the
clou d'or d^amitie>; and it may be that that
sufficed for him. He certainly was not the man
to accept the restrictions which Catherine liked
to impose upon her favourites ; and his aim
seems to have been to continue to exploit his
Empress while ceasing to embrace her — to give
himself a grievance, and then to demand com-
230

ZAVADOVSKI

pensation. The story that he so manceuvred,
by feigning ilh:^ss, as to be supplanted without
giving offence, is credible, and may be accepted.

In any case, he was supplanted ; and if it
suited him better to jilt than to be jilted, he got
his way. Whether Catherine gave him a rival
during his absence in the provinces or during
his presence in the capital is not quite clear ;
but he presently found Zavadovski installed
in the apartment which he had been privileged
to occupy, and he handled the situation like a
man of genius — very differently from the manner
in which Orlof had handled the situation created
by the preferment of Vasilchikof.

He knew Catherine well enough not to be
afraid of disobeying her ; and he had taken
Zavadovski's measure. He recognised him as
an Adonis of no particular importance, qualified,
by his knowledge of languages, for the position
which he held as Catherine's secretary, but not
a man likely to wield influence, or capable of
browbeating opposition. If there was brow-
beating to be done, it was Potemkin, with his
one eye and savage squint, who would carry off
the honour of the contest. So he set to work,
Catherine sent him a message that he had better
travel for the benefit of his health ; but he
declined to budge. On the contrary, he repaired
to the Court, and sat down at Catherine's card-
table ; and she overlooked his disobedience, and
let him join the game. Later, he got his chance
of talking to her ; and then he made vigorous

231

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

representations, bellowing at her with his deep
voice like an infuriated bull.

So she wished to discard him — very well.
So she had introduced her secretary into his
apartments like a thief in the night — no matter.
Her heart was her own, and she was free to
dispose of it as she liked — he was making no
grievance about that. But he was not, like the
others, a mere paramour to beguile her idle
hours — he had rights and claims which must not
be treated so cavalierly. He was a general, a
Minister of State, a Prince of the Holy Roman
Empire — he could be a formidable enemy and
a useful friend. Did Catherine think her throne
so well established that she had no need of him ?
If so, she was very much mistaken. There were
cabals. There was an Orlof faction ; there was
a Panin faction ; there were those who wished
to depose her in favour of the Grand Duke Paul.
Did she feel safe ? Did she regard Zavadovski
as a sufficient tower of strength against those
intrigues ? Was not a friend, whose interests
were her own, even more necessary to her than
a lover ? — especially if that friend might,
supposing his friendship to be rejected, become
an enemy ? If she wanted her pleasures, she
must have them — it was no part of his duty to
interfere ; but she must not mistake the ministers
of her pleasures for statesmen, or push aside,
in the interest of handsome young secretaries or
subalterns, the men who were really capable of
ruling Russia.
232

ZAVADOVSKI

Thus Potemkin thundered, and Catherine
trembled before him. She did not presume to
reproach him with inconsistency, or to remind
him of what he had so lately said about the
awful consequences of living in open sin. It was
quite recognised between them that that talk
belonged to a comedy which had failed and
need not be referred to. Potemkin proposed to
have his pleasures, while leaving Catherine hers,
and to continue to live, while also letting her
continue to live, the life which he had professed
to find so revolting to his naturally pious inclina-
tions. But he also proposed to rule Russia,
and to rule Catherine, even to the extent of
appointing himself the director of her pleasures,
exercising a veto on its instruments, and keep-
ing a panel of favourites from which she might
make her selection.

And he got his way by the sheer display of
brutal power, and exercised a far wider and
deeper influence in his new position than in his
old one. For years he was practically Dictator
of Russia, and Catherine was like a child in
his hands — albeit a child who sometimes gave
him trouble. He said, among other things, —
smashing glass and china with his emphatic
gestures, — that, just as Vasilchikof had gone,
so now Zavadovski must go ; and Zavadovski
went — the number of roubles which he took
with him being 1,380,000.

233

CHAPTER XXI

M. de Corberon at St. Petersburg — His Reports on the
Favourites — Zavadovski — Korsakof — Zoritch

About Zavadovski there is little to be said
(beyond what has been said already) except
that he was a Ukranian and the son of a
clergyman, and was succeeded in his office
by Lieutenant Zoritch. About Zoritch, again,
there is little to be related except that he was
Potemkin's nominee, and went about saying
that Potemkin had charged him one hundred
thousand roubles for the introduction. It
would have been worth his while to pay an
even larger sum, for he did better than either
his predecessor or Vasilchikof . His emoluments,
though he only held office for about a twelve-
month, were no less than 1,420,000 roubles.

Apparently he was of the type of Zavadovski
— " only more so " ; an Adonis, like Zava-
dovski, but more empty-headed, and without
Zavadovski's knowledge of languages and
secretarial aptitudes. Potemkin, it is said, al-
ways put forward a fool for the post of favourite
in preference to a man of ability. The Empress,
he knew, did not suffer fools gladly, even
234

M. DE CORBERON

when she admired their good looks. Their
folly was a stimulus to her mutability ; and
her mutability suited Potemkin's plans. He
could always have a new fool ready to take an
old fool's place. When the office of favourite
was filled by a rapid succession of fools, it
would be stripped of political importance, and
he, the maker of favourites, would be greater
than any of them, and would rule Russia
either through them or in spite of them.
Catherine, he had realised, liked to be ruled
by a strong man, though she preferred to renew
her youth by smiling upon handsome young
subalterns and secretaries. So he put forward
Zoritch, as we have seen ; and after Zoritch
he proposed Korsakof, and then Lanskoi, and
Yermolof, and Mamonof — all of them men
whom he could flick out of his way if they
crossed the path of his ambition. It was a
period of quick changes in Catherine's heart,
succeeding to the period of long fidelities —
not altogether uncoloured by sentiment, as
the course of the narrative will show, but on
the whole, perhaps, lending itself rather better
to the jests of the smoking-room than to
ecstatic contemplation of the dme sensible.

It was towards the beginning of this period
that the Chevalier de Corberon came to St.
Petersburg, where he was attached to the
Embassy of the Marquis de Juigne, and acted
for some time as French Charge d' Affaires.
He has already been mentioned as the diplo-

285

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

matist who was reprimanded by his Govern-
ment for fining his dispatches with smoking-
room stories about the Empress and her
admirers, to the exclusion of matters of pohti-
cal importance. It may be urged in his defence
that he was very young ; that the things which
he saw and heard at the Court of St. Petersburg
struck him as very strange ; and that it was not
unnatural for him to suppose that the French
Foreign Office would wish to be informed of
them. So he looked in through that window
on the Neva to which we have so often had
occasion to refer, and surveyed what he saw
from the point of view of a man of the world
who was not yet old enough or experienced
enough to be blase. The fruits of his observa-
tions are set forth not only in his dispatches,
but also in his Diary and private correspondence,
which have been published ; and though his
specific statements on matters of fact are
sometimes inaccurate, a good deal of value
attaches to the picturesque impressions of his
alert and nimble mind.

He represented, at seven-and-twenty, the
intellectual aristocracy of the ancien regime.
He also represented the gaiety, the gallantry —
and even the sensibility — of his age and nation.
Above all things, the Chevalier was dme sensible,
and he was proud of it ; but he was dme sensible
in strict accordance with the manners and tone
of good society. His friends opened their
hearts to him, and he opened his to them —
236

M. DE CORBERON

sometimes with a surprising candour. He was
always in love, but generally in love with more
than one woman at the same time. In France
he had left her whom he speaks of as La
Preferee — whom he would have married if he
had not been too poor, and whom he still hoped
to marry when fortune smiled on him. His
letters are full of protestations that, though
he roams througli pleasures and palaces, he
will never forget La Preferee, but will be faithful
to her in his fashion. Only his fashion is — his
fashion. It includes a great deal of roaming
through palaces and pleasures, and permits of
the life of the butterfly, flitting from flower
to flower, and sipping sweets from each. The
smiles of women, the Chevalier protests, are in-
dispensable to his heart. Though they mean
but little to him, he cannot do without them.
So he begins with a gallant adventure in a
hotel on his way to Russia, and proceeds to
lay siege to the hearts of maids-of -honour —
an attack the more exciting because he finds
them carefully shielded from temptation on
account of a recent scandalous affair between
one of their number and one of his British
colleagues.

It is nothing, he repeats. These affairs are
not serious — he seeks no serious affairs. La
Preferee always has, and always will have,
the first place in his heart — other women only
please him in so far as they remind him of her.
And no doubt he meant what he said, but the

237

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

time nevertheless came when he ceased to say
it because he had ceased to mean it — because,
in short, the inevitable had happened. The
affair with " the little Narishkin " was only a
flash in the pan. The affair with Princess
Trubetskoi (aged nineteen) was not much more.
One might make a list of other affairs and say
the same about them. But when Normandez,
the Spanish Minister, introduced him at the
house of Behmer, the German merchant, the
fate of his heart was sealed. Behmer had a
daughter, Charlotte ; and the Chevalier had
only seen her a few times when he was head-
over-ears in love — and pour le bon motif. La
F referee was forgotten, and Charlotte's praises
were sung in letter after letter. " I have the
good fortune," the Chevalier wrote, " to be
loved in the German style — that is to say,
frankly, and without affectations." So he gave
up gallantry for sentiment, and courted Charlotte
in the simple manner of any susceptible young
man of the middle classes, and betrothed himself
to her, and, after a long engagement, married
her.

That is his story : and, of course, it does not
really concern us ; but one glances at it, before
quoting the Chevalier's criticisms of the Court of
Catherine the Great, because of the light which
it throws upon his normal attitude towards
the affairs of the heart. He was, we see, no
cynic, but a man of sentiment, disposed to take
all sincere aifections seriously, but, at the same
238

M. DE CORBERON

time, sufficiently a man of the world to be in
no danger of mistaking a comedy for either a
tragedy or an idyll. A friend who came to him
with a tale of true love, whether returned or un-
reciprocated, was always sure of a sympathetic
hearing ; but the spectacle of the proceedings
at Catherine's Court impressed him merely as
a comedy performed for his diversion. In
some respects, he did her an injustice ; but,
though there were some things which he did
not understand, — the inwardness of Potemkin's
evacuation of his office, for example, — he was,
on the whole, an intelligent, as well as an amused,
observer —

" My friend, I have seen the new favourite,
whose name is Zavadovski, the private secre-
tary. He is better-looking than Potemkin ; and,
as for the essentials of his post, he possesses
them in an eminent degree. Still, though his
talents were put to the test at Moscow, his
preferment is not definitely decided upon. . . .
I am inclined to think that Zavadovski will
only gratify a passing fancy."

So the Chevalier begins in February 1776.
By April he has realised that the new favourite
has, indeed, got his appointment, but that the
appointment seems likely to carry less distinction
than of old —

" Or] of is regarded by Catherine as her
faithful friend ; but, as he desires no other place

239

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

in her heart, and as this sovereign cannot dis-
pense with a lover, Zavadovski will take that
position. They tell me, however, that he will
have no authority — if the Empress can, in fact,
withhold authority from the man who dominates
her in that capacity."

Then, a little later, comes the rumour that
Zavadovski is to be asked to retire —

" His successor is to be Besbrodof — a
Ukranian colonel — d^une taille, (Tune force, d'une
vigueur ! — // merite son poste.^''

That, however, was a false alarm. Zava-
dovski was still in favour in June, on the 19th
of which month the Chevalier writes —

" I hear that Zavadovski, who has been a
sort of subordinate favourite of the Empress,
has received from her Majesty 50,000 roubles,
a pension of 5000 roubles, and 4000 peasants,
in Ukrania, where peasants are valuable. You
will allow, my friend, that the metier is a profit-
able one in this part of the world."

And then Zavadovski is bowed out, and
Zoritch is bowed in —

" This favourite (Potemkin), who is in a
stronger position than ever, and plays here the
part which the Pompadour played towards the
end of the life of Louis xv., has introduced
a certain Zoritch, who has been promoted
240

ZORITCH

lieutenant-general and Inspector of Light In-
fantry. I am told that he has been given
1800 peasants for his coup d'essai.''

Zoritch, however, has no history beyond the
fact that he pocketed 1,420,000 roubles and was
succeeded by Korsakof ; and Korsakof, in his
turn, has very little history beyond the fact
that he pocketed 920,000 roubles, and was suc-
ceeded by Lanskoi.

He was quite a common man, — a sergeant in
a regiment of hussars, — picked out, of course,
by Potemkin, who held that, the lower the lover's
degree, the less likely was he to thwart his own
ambitions. His real name was Korsak ; but his
protectors lengthened it to Korsakof, on the
assumption that the extended appellative had
a nobler ring, and would seem worthier of im-
perial gifts and favours. The one thing quite
certain about him is that, while he was hand-
some enough to please Catherine, he was also
fool enough to please Potemkin : " the very
type of a noodle," writes the Chevalier — " a
noodle of the most degraded kind, such as we
should not tolerate in France." It is also re-
corded that he had a tenor voice — a wonderful
instrument of music — and that Catherine tried
to educate him.

She had previously tried to educate Zoritch,
— not altogether without success, — lecturing to
him as they paced the Palace gardens, and find-
ing him an attentive, if not a particularly able,
Q 241

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

scholar. The ChevaHer tells us that she boasted
of his aptitude for learning ; and Zoritch him-
self, in after, years, when he had retired, to live
on his savings in his country seat, confided
to his friends that he had been a boor before
his good lady — sa dame — took him in hand,
but that she had formed him, and made him
the polished gentleman that he was. Korsakof,
however, was less intelligently receptive, as a
well - known anecdote attests. Catherine one
day sent him a number of books, together with
a command to read them. He did not read
them, but he drew the inference that her esti-
mate of a man's worth depended upon the size
of his library, and decided to acquire a library.
" I want some books," he said to the trades-
man ; and the bookseller inquired what books
he wanted. " I want," he explained, " some
large books for the lower shelves, and some
small books for the upper ones. These are the
measurements." The bookseller bowed, await-
ing more precise instructions ; and Korsakof
looked round the shop, and observed that certain
shelves were filled with volumes all of the same
size and appearance. " Ah yes ! " he said :
" here are some books that will do ; " and he
never knew, until a friend pointed the fact out
to him, that he had purchased several hundred
copies of a single work.

Korsakof s dismissal, however, was due,
not to his indifference to literature, but to his
revolt against the restrictions of the gilded
242

KORSAKOF

cage. He tempted Catherine's confidante, the
Countess Bruce, and she fell ; or perhaps (for
there is no certainty in the matter) it was she
who tempted him. It is said to have been
Potemkin who provided them with facihties
for transcending the hmitations of the cage ;
and he is said also to have contrived that they
should be caught transcending them. His
motives can only be guessed at ; the best ac-
credited is that he merely wished to make a
fresh appointment in order to draw a fresh com-
mission for his services as an intermediary.
Caught, at all events, the offenders were — by
Catherine herself — behind a door which was
left ajar at a time when it ought to have been
locked ; and the consequence was that Kor-
sakof went the way that Zoritch had gone
before him. It is said that he and Zoritch used,
in after years, to play cards together, and com-
pare notes as to their experiences, which had
certainly been very similar.

Our authority for the statement is Sir
Joseph Harris, afterwards first Earl of Malmes-
bury, then British Ambassador at St. Peters-
burg. He was not such an amused spectator
as the Chevalier, but took the high moral tone
of a man compelled by circumstances to associ-
ate with persons whom he would not spontane-
ously h^ve touched even with a pair of tongs.
Still, in the grave style of a diplomat who dis-
charges a painful duty, he told his Government
what he thought his Government ought to

243

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

know ; and he took the view that his Govern-
ment ought to be kept au courant with all the
scandals of the day. It is from him, for in-
stance, that we learn that Zoritch retired from
his office with threats of violence, and that there
was more than one candidate for the succession —

" The Lieutenant of Police of Moscow, Mons.
Acharoff, is a middle-aged man, well made,
though with more of the Hercules than the
Apollo. There is, I understand, a Persian can-
didate in case of M. de Zoritch's resignation,
but I cannot speak of his figure, as I am not
personally acquainted with him. Zoritch is
prepared for his dismission, but I am told he is
prepared to call his successor to an account.
Je sais Hen que je dois sauter, mats par Dieu je
couperai les oreilles a celui qui prend ma place,
were his words, in talking the other day on this
subject."

And then, when the hour of dismissal is
becoming more imminent —

" A few days ago, Prince Potemkin, displeased
with Zoritch, presented to the Empress, as she
was going to the play, a tall hussar officer, one
of his adjutants. She distinguished him a
good deal. Zoritch was present. As soon as
Her Imperial Majesty was gone, he fell upon
Potemkin in a very violent manner, made use
of the strongest expressions of abuse, and in-
sisted on his fighting him. Potemkin declined
244

ZORITCH

this offer, and behaved on the occasion as a
person not undeserving the invectives bestowed
upon him. The play being ended, Zoritch
followed the Empress into her apartment, flung
himself at her feet, and confessed what he had
done ; saying that, notwithstanding the honours
and riches she had heaped upon him, he was
indifferent to everything but her favour and
good graces. . . . Potemkin is determined to
have him dismissed, and Zoritch is determined
to cut the throat of his successor. Judge of the
tenour of the whole Court from this anecdote."

And then, when the successor was at last
appointed — ''

" Zoritch, a few days ago, received his final
dismission. It was conveyed to him by the
Empress herself in very gentle terms, but received
by him in a very different manner. Forgetting
to whom he was speaking, he was very bitter
in his reproaches ; painted this mutable con-
duct in the strongest colours, and foretold the
most fatal consequences from it. . . . Zoritch,
with an increase of pension, an immense sum
of ready money, and an addition of seven
thousand peasants to his estates, is going to
travel. His successor, by name Korsak, will
not be declared till this journey takes place ;
the impetuosity of Zoritch's character making
it not safe for any man to take publicly this
office upon him while he remains in the country.

245

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

Both Court and town are occupied with this
event alone, and I am sorry to say it gives rise
to many unpleasant reflections, and sinks in
the eyes of foreigners the reputation of the
Empress and the consideration of the Empire."

Then, before Korsakof had been long estab-
lished in his post —

" The new favourite is very much on his
decline. There are several competitors for his
employment : some supported by Prince Potem-
kin ; some by Prince Orlof and Count Panin
. . . but she seems strongly disposed to choose
for herself. . . . The fate of these young gentle-
men still remains undecided, though it appears
settled that Korsakof should be sent to Spa for
his health. As the small remains of decency
kept up when I first came have totally dis-
appeared, I should not be surprised if, instead
of one favourite, we should see several : and
that the effects should by that means hasten the
evils which even otherwise must inevitably fall
on the Empire."

And then, early in 1779 —

" The favourite of the day, who wears all the
insignia and has the public honour of that office,
is still the same Korsak ; he is very good-
natured, but silly to a degree, and entirely
subservient to the orders of Prince Potemkin
and the Countess Bruce. These two seem now
246

KORSAKOF

in quiet possession of the Empress's mind.
He is supreme in regard to everything that
regards her serious or pleasurable pursuits ; the
other interferes only in the latter."

In what fashion the Countess presumed to in-
terfere with the Empress's "pleasurable pursuits"
we have already seen. The consequences of the
interference are noted by the Ambassador thus —

" Korsak received his dismission from the
mouth of the Empress herself yesterday morning ;
and, a few hours afterwards, General Betzkoy
was ordered to assure him of the Empress's
intention of providing munificently for him, but
that she wished he would either travel or marry.
His successor is called Lanskoi, of the district of
Smolensko ; he was one of the Chevalier Guards,
and since Peterhof has been the object of Her
Imperial Majesty's attention. Potemkin, how-
ever, having another person in view, contrived
to prevent his nomination till now, when he was
induced to consent to it by a present of not less
than 900,000 roubles in land and money on his
birthday."

It was Potemkin's third commission, drawn
as agent for the affairs of Catherine's heart ; but,
though heavier than the two preceding ones,
was well worth paying, for the number of
roubles which Lanskoi pocketed was no less than
7,260,000.

247

CHAPTER XXII

Further Favourites — The Reign of Lanskoi — His Death —
The Reign of Yermolof

The story commonly told of the rise of Lanskoi is
that General Tolstoy, when received in audience,
drew Catherine's attention to him. " Your
Imperial Majesty has a handsome young fellow
doing sentry-go in the anteroom," he presumed
to say ; and Catherine went out to inspect the
sentry for herself, and was so favourably im-
pressed that she at once invited him into the
gilded cage.

Wealth beyond the dreams of avarice — a
fortune, to be precise, of 7,260,000 roubles — was
in store for him ; but, at the hour of his pro-
motion, five shirts constituted the sum total
of his earthly possessions. It is related that,
one night, having no money in his pocket, he
appealed for a night's lodging to a professor
of French with whom he was acquainted, and
that the professor gave him a shakedown on
the floor, while he himself went to bed. It is
further related that, when he had attained to
prosperity, he invited the professor, in his turn,
to dine and spend the night, saying to him
248

LANSKOI

genially, when the hour grew late, " Bedtime at
last, my friend ; but now it is my turn to sleep
between the sheets, and yours to make yourself
as comfortable as you can on the bare boards."
It is a graphic picture of the way in which
Fortune's wheel just then revolved at Catherine's
Court. We have already seen how heavily
Potemkin taxed the revolution.

The little that there is to be said about
Lanskoi may be summed up in a few sentences.
Catherine tried to educate him, as she had tried
to educate her other favourites, but not much
more successfully. " She has spent," writes the
Chevalier de Corberon, " ten thousand roubles
in buying him a library of books which he
assuredly will never read." He adds that she
exhorted him to read Cicero's Letters, with a
view of qualifying himself for the conduct of
the affairs of State ; and he proceeds to the
generalisation —

" This woman's illusions with regard to her
favourites — illusions perpetually dispelled and
then as frequently renewed, as her innumerable
weaknesses succeed one another — are really
terrible. She has high ideals and the best
intentions, but her morals corrupt the country
and her extravagance ruins it ; she will end with
the reputation of a weakly sentimental woman."

For the rest, Lanskoi was twenty-two years
of age, had a mob of troublesome poor relations,

249

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

and was too fond of punch — a special punch of
his own invention, compounded of tokay, rum,
and the juice of pine-apples ; but at least he was
a contented favourite, and showed no desire to
leave the nest when he had feathered it. He
occupied it for four years, and only vacated
it by death ; though rumours that his ejection
was contemplated gained credence from time
to time, and are repeated by both the Chev-
alier and Harris. His successor, according
to the former, was to be a certain Captain
Pajacksi — " a young man of the build of a
Hercules, of whom nothing else is at present
known." Harris, on the contrary, mentions a
certain Redinnof, adding the explanation which
his intimacy with Potemkin enables him to
give—

" Lanskoi has conducted himself in so un-
exceptionable a manner as not to afford the
smallest pretext for dismissing him. He is
neither jealous, inconstant, nor impertinent,
and laments the disgrace he foresees impend-
ing in so pathetic a manner that he puzzles both
his sovereign and her confidants how to get rid
of him without appearing harsh. The successor,
however, presses hard upon him, and compassion
will soon give way to a stronger feeling. I
understand my friend proposes to make use
of the unbounded power these moments will
give him, in obtaining no less than 700,000
roubles for himself."
250

LANSKOI

Potemkin, that is to say, thought that it
was time for him to draw yet another commis-
sion ; and it is difficult to find anything beyond
this passion for a percentage at the bottom of
the intrigues for Lanskoi's discomfiture. Cather-
ine's own feehngs must be judged from the fact
that she retained Lanskoi, and endowed him more
richly than any of the others. She was nearly
thirty years his senior, so that there may have
been a maternal element in her affection, though
it can hardly have been the predominant feeling.
His death is attributed to a complication of
scarlet fever and angina pectoris — aggravated,
according to his German physician, by the
exhausting effects of aphrodisiac drugs. Per-
haps the punch compounded of tokay, rum,
and the juice of pine-apples had also played
its part in undermining his constitution ; but
it is seldom possible to make head or tail of
the diagnoses of eighteenth-century physicians.
What is indisputable is the intensity of Cather-
ine's distress. She neglected her imperial duties
in order to lock herself up and cry with Lanskoi's
sister ; and there were those among her courtiers
who expected her to die of her grief. Her
lamentations, in her letters to Grimm, were
loud —

" Public affairs," she wrote, " are getting
on all right ; but I myself, who was so happy,
have no happiness any longer. I cry, and I
write, and that is all that I can do. If you

251

COJMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

want to know the truth about me, I can only
tell you that, for three months, I have been
inconsolable for my irreparable loss. I am now
getting used, once more, to the sight of human
faces ; but my heart still bleeds as it did at
the first instant of my loss. I do my duty,
and try to do it well ; but my sorrow is such
as I have never felt before, and for three months
I have been in the most terrible state, suffering
the tortures of the damned."

Other letters, to other correspondents, are
couched in the same tone. There is no mis-
taking the note of sincerity which sounds in
them ; and of course it is a mistake (albeit a
common one) to suppose that the mutable are
never sincere. Catherine might be " weakly
sentimental," as M. de Corberon declared, but
she could also be genuinely sentimental at
her hour. We may assume that the loneliness
of her exalted position oppressed her, much
as the sense of his dignified isolation is said
sometimes to weigh upon the mind of the
captain of a man-of-war. By upbringing, if
not by birth, she was a German bourgeoise —
and these are pre-eminently sentimental. Those
who should have been her equals were now
her inferiors. Her actual equals in rank she
only met occasionally, and only on ceremonial
terms. Sincerity and simplicity were only
possible to her within the confines of the
gilded cage, where she could hope that a
252

LANSKOI

young man who owed everything to l\er would
love her for herself alone.

Not all of them had done so — indeed hardly
any of them had done so. The best of them,
visibly embarrassed by their promotion, had
quickly bored her. Others had exploited her,
and then made her ridiculous b)'' their familiari-
ties, or their infidelities, or both. Empress
though she was, and imperially beautiful, she
had known jealousy and neglect, just like any
rich tradesman's daughter who buys a noble
husband with her father's fortune. If all
the stories are true, she had even known
what it was to be knocked about when she
objected. Moreover, marriage with an equal
was out of the question for her — the dark
stories of the death of her first husband barred
the way to that ; and she was a woman who
felt that it was not good for her to live alone ;
and, being an Empress, albeit an Empress
getting on in years, she had only to lift her
finger and beckon, in order to replace a lover
who had tired or displeased her. She could
have lovers, in short, as easily as an Emperor
could have mistresses, and had as little need
to resist the temptations of novelty. Because
she yielded to those temptations, and made no
mystery about it, she has been compared to
Louis XV. ; but she differed from the Well-
Beloved in an essential point.

She needed sentiment — not always, but from
time to time. She needed — also from time

253

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

to time — the illusion of those things to the
reality of which it was impossible for her to
attain. Lanskoi gave her that illusion, as none
of her other lovers, since her separation from
Poniatowski, had given it. Consequently, she
valued and cherished him as she had valued
and cherished none of them. It did not matter
to her that he was expensive — for the bene-
factions of an Autocrat are only a matter of
robbing Peter to endow Paul ; and she forgave
him for his addiction to rum punch — though
she herself only drank weak wine and water ;
and when he died, she really felt as if his death
had overclouded her sentimental life for ever,
and she would never (being now fifty-five) have
the heart to love again.

Yet she wanted to love again ; for, if she
had been in love with her lover, she was also
in love with love itself. And a woman who is
anxious to love again at fifty-five knows that
she has little time to lose, and is therefore
responsive to appeals to conquer her sorrow
and make an effort; and, in the case of an
Empress, such appeals are not likely to be
lacking. They were not wanting in Catherine's
case ; and at last, after the lapse of ten months,
she responded to them. Grimm, as usual, was
the correspondent in whom she confided —

" My heart," she wrote to him, " is once
more calm and serene, for, with the help of my
friends, I have made an effort and roused
251

YERMOLOF

myself. We began with a comedy, which they
say was charming — there is your proof that I am
once more gay and animated. The period of
monosyllables is past, and I cannot complain
of the lack of friends whose attachment and
attentions distract and relieve me, though I
needed time to recover the taste for such things,
and still more time to recover the habit of them.
Which means — to put it in one word instead of
a hundred — that I have found a new friend,
capable of winning my friendship, and very
worthy of it."

Just so ; and Potemkin had played his usual
part in the transaction. He had submitted, it
is said, two candidates — Yermolof and Mamo-
nof; and Catherine, while favourably im-
pressed by both of them, gave her preference to
the former. Castera tells us that the young
Prince Dashkof also proposed himself as what,
in the electoral world, is called an "' independent
candidate," but was deceived, tricked, and
defeated by Potemkin' s cunning. His mother,
in her Memoirs, treats the calumny with silent
contempt ; and it may very well be no more
than a calumny. The man, at any rate, who
actually caught Catherine's heart on the rebound
was the aforesaid Yermolof.

He was a subaltern in the foot-guards. His
tenancy of the gilded cage was brief ; and little
is recorded of him either for good or evil.
Catherine accepted him without enthusiasm,

255

COxMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

in the spirit of the bride who prefers a mariage
de convenance to the indignity of perpetual
spinsterhood — or perhaps one should say in the
spirit of the man of the world who takes a
mistress, not because he is infatuated, but because
he has convinced himself that such companion-
ship will relieve his boredom. He was eligible, but
he did not touch her heart ; and his failure to
do so is reflected in the fact that the shower of
roubles rained on him was, in comparison with
some of the previous showers, the merest drizzle.
The number of roubles which fell to his share
was only 550,000.

No doubt the lukewarmness of Catherine's
attachment was the principal reason why his
reign was brief ; but there were other reasons
also. He waxed arrogant, crossed Potemkin's
path, and got in Potemkin's way — a challenge
to a trial of strength which Potemkin was not
slow to take up. Yermolof had an uncle who
had had a deadly quarrel with Potemkin at the
card-table ; he espoused his cause. He also es-
poused the cause of a certain ex-Khan of the
Crimea, whose pension he accused Potemkin
of misappropriating ; and he succeeded in
causing a temporary coolness between Catherine
and her powerful adviser. But his illusion of
triumph was shortlived. As soon as Potemkin
realised the new situation, he came to Catherine's
boudoir, frowning, threatening, and thundering.
She must choose, he said, between Yermolof
and himself — and she must choose at once.
256

YERMOLOF

" So long," he said, " as you keep that white
negro, 1 1 shall not set my foot inside the Palace."

Catherine, being accustomed to be ordered
about by him, submitted. It seems that she
was too indifferent to Yermolof even to resist.
She wanted a favourite ; but whether the
favourite was Yermolof or another did not
matter. Perhaps her indifference was her
fashion of showing her fidelity to the memory
of Lanskoi. However that may be, she sent
Yermolof an instant and urgent order to travel
for the benefit of his health, writing the order
while Potemkin stood over her and practically
dictated it. Yermolof, receiving the order,
pleaded that he might at least be permitted to
see his Empress once more in order to say fare-
well to her ; but Potemkin would not have it.
He proposed to strike while the iron was hot,
and to take no risk of what might happen when
the iron was cold. He told Catherine that he
declined to leave her presence until Yermolof
had left the Palace ; and Catherine, knowing
him for a man of his word, did as he insisted.
Then he rushed off and told the French Ambas-
sador, M. de Segur, what had happened.

M. de Segur had been as anxious as Potemkin
to see the favourite deposed. He had contrived
to bring Potemkin over to the French interest —
most likely by corrupt means which we need not
stop to investigate. Yermolof's influence, such
as it was, had been thrown into the opposite

* He so called Yermolof on account of his extreme pallor.
R 257

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

scale ; and M. de Segur, who did not know his
Potemkin, had expected to see Potemkin dis-
comfited and Yermolof triumphant. So now,
as we gather from M. de Segur's Memoires,
Potemkin sang his paean —

" As soon as I met the Prince, he threw
himself into my arms, exclaiming, * Well,
my friend, did I mislead you ? Has that boy
bowled me over ? Have I been destroyed by
my audacity ? Not a bit of it. For once, Mr.
Diplomat, you will have to admit that, in
these political matters, my predictions are more
to be relied upon than yours.' "

And M. de Segur echoed the paean, in suit-
able language, in a dispatch to the French
Foreign Office, openly rejoicing in the overthrow
of an upstart who had, he said, honoured him
with his personal dislike, and " used the most
indecent language whenever the name of France
was mentioned." Whence we may infer that
even in the eyes of the corps diplomatique the
office of favourite had come to be regarded as
a post in the Civil Service, though not of the
permanent Civil Service — a proper subject of
jobbery and intrigue, to be conducted without
superfluous consideration for the preferences of
Catherine's own heart.

And so, Yermolof having gone the way of
all favourites, — expelled almost as suddenly as
the mistress to whom Sainte-Beuve, after he had
258

MAMONOF

locked her out, threw down her clothes and
other belongings from her bedroom window, —
with a comparatively modest number of roubles
in his pocket, Potemkin's other nominee, Mamo-
nof, was ushered into the gilded cage in his
stead.

259

CHAPTER XXIIl

The Accession of Mamonof

The reign of Mamonof is hardly to be called
a reign, though it lasted longer than that of
his predecessor. Measured strictly in roubles,
its glory was less than that of his predecessor.
Yerniolof, in a year, accumulated 550,000
roubles ; Mamonof no more than 880,000
roubles in four years. Moreover, Yermolof did
at least attempt to meddle with matters classed
as too high* for him; whereas Mamonof was
afraid to meddle. One gets his measure, in
that respect, in two stories told by the Comte
de Segur, who was well disposed towards him
because he, on his part, was well disposed
towards France and the French influence.

M. de Segur's great difficulty was to get
past Catherine's ministers, — in particular,
to get past Potemkin, who was no longer
as friendly as he had been, — and gain the
Empress's own ear for certain proposals which
he was charged to make. To that end he
wrote to Mamonof, appealing to him to use his
influence ; and Mamonof hastened to reply that
260

THE ACCESSION OF MAMONOF

he had none, being strictly forbidden to inter-
pose in political questions. But M. de Segur,
who was a very clever diplomatist, had been
well aware of that when he wrote. Mamonof,
he had calculated, would run to the Empress
with the letter and the draft of his own answer,
in order to show how strictly he desired to
confine himself to his decorative functions —
Catherine would thus indirectly learn the facts
which he suspected Potemkin of withholding
from her. She did so, and the Ambassador
gained his point, showing great address in
using the favourite in the only way in which
this particular favourite could be used. Then,
in order to show his gratitude, he invited
the favourite to dinner ; and the invitation
brings us to the second anecdote.

Mamonof, M. de Segur tells us, was not
allowed outside the gates of the Imperial Palace
without permission, but had to apply for an
exeat, like a modern undergraduate who desires
to run up to town to attend a funeral. The
favour of the exeat was granted, as an act of
courtesy to the Ambassador, but the duration
of the leave of absence was strictly hmited ;
and Catherine took steps to see that it was not
exceeded. She came, in the course of the
evening, to the Ambassador's door to fetch
her favourite, as a nurse fetches a child. Her
carriage was seen from the window, slowly
driving to and fro ; she herself was seen, look-
ing up, waiting, watching, and making sure.

261

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

The stories are significant, and the impression
derived from them is confirmed by a passage
quoted by M. WaHszewski from Langeron's
unpubHshed Memoirs —

" Some of the favourites," Langeron writes,
" contrived to distinguish and dignify their
degraded functions : Potemkin by making him-
self, to all intents and purposes, an Emperor ;
Zavadovski by making himself generally useful
in the civil administration of the Empire ;
Mamonof by making it clear to every one that
he felt thoroughly ashamed of himself."

One may surmise that a young man of six-
and-twenty generally does feel ashamed of
himself when he not only consents to be the
lover of a woman of fifty-eight, but is publicly
exploited as such ; and Catherine, as we know,
did not hide the affections of her heart under a
bushel. On this occasion, she caused Mamonof's
portrait, together with her own, to be hung as
an ornament in every room of her pleasaunce,
the Hermitage, to the respectful amazement of
her guests, and even allowed engraved copies
of the portraits to be sold as pendants in the
St. Petersburg shops. Moreover, in the course
of her famous journey to the Crimea, to which
we shall presently come, Mamonof's bed, placed
side by side with her own, was an object of
admiration which sundry of the companions of
her progress were privileged to inspect.

If the lover had been, like some of the lovers,
262

■i^a/^^'>W' /^^W<^

THE ACCESSION OF MAMONOF

a promoted non-commissioned officer, he might
not have minded. He might, in that case,
even have been proud, beUeving his elevation
to be the subject of envy as well as remark.
But Mamonof was by way of being a gentleman
— a man of refinement and culture, if not of
character. Those who met him say that he
talked well — and in several languages. He
was " quite witty," says Sacken of Saxony ;
and he was clever enough to write trifles for
amateur theatrical performances — poor stuff,
indeed, but not absolutely beneath contempt.
Moreover, he was of good family, related in
some way to the illustrious Russian House of
Rurik. One can understand that such a man
" felt his position," even though he did not
display any great haste to retire from it —
even though the Emperor of Austria gave him
a gold watch and made him, not indeed a
Prince, but at any rate a Count, of the Holy
Roman Empire. He looked ahead, no doubt, as
most men do who perform uncongenial tasks,
to the time when he would be free to follow
his inclinations, and live his life in his own
way ; but, in the meanwhile, he unblushingly
and unshamefacedly added field to field, rouble
to rouble, serf to serf.

Catherine meant to be charming to him — a
mother as well as a mistress. She loved most
of her later lovers in that spirit, and had a
retort ready for anyone who reproached her
for preferring lovers of such tender years. • "I

263

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

am rendering a great service to the Empire,"
she said, " in forming the characters of so many
gifted young men ; " and there was no denying
that she could cite a sufficieat number of in-
stances to make out a case. Zavadovski, after
loving her, had become a very competent
official. Zoritch, the ex-major of hussars, was
inspired, after loving her, to found at his own
cost the first Russian Military Academy. The
case of Potemkin — though he, doubtless, taught
more than he learnt — has been before us ; and
there is the case of Zubof still to come. De-
cidedly Catherine could claim that to love her
was a liberal education, in the sense that her
lovers were also her pupils, and that a fair
proportion of the pupils passed into the Civil
Service, and proved themselves competent
functionaries.- No doubt it might have been
with Mamonof as with the others, if he had
been that sort of man. But he was not. He
" felt his position " ; he wondered what people
thought of him ; he was afraid of being laughed
at ; he was ashamed, and therefore powerless
to exploit the favours which oppressed him.
One thinks of him, far more than of any of the
other favourites, as a toy, a pet, a lap-dog.

" Red coat " was Catherine's nickname for
him ; and this is her report of him to the ever-
inquisitive Grimm —

*' The red coat envelops a person whose
heart is excellent, and whose honesty is great.
264

THE ACCESSION OF MAMONOF

He has wit enough for four, an inexhaustible
stock of gaiety, much originality in his views
of life and his ways of expressing himself, an
admirable education which qualifies him to
shine. He hides his love of poetry as if it
were a crime ; he is passionately fond of music ;
he takes in ideas with rare facility. God knows
what he hasn't learnt by heart. He recites ;
he gossips ; he has the manners and tone
of good society ; his politeness is something
wonderful ; he writes both Russian and French
far better than most Russians. His appearance
is in perfect harmony with his intelligence. His
features are very regular ; he has beautiful
black eyes and equally beautiful eyelashes. He
is a little above medium height ; his air is
noble, and his manners are easy and natural.
If you were to meet this Red Coat, I am sure
you would ask his name if you did not already
know it."

To Potemkin, again, Catherine wrote of
Mamonof as " invaluable " ; and Potemkin was
not jealous. One may reasonably infer that
Potemkin knew his man, had taken the measure
of his value, and apprehended no rivalry from
him in his own sphere of influence — having, in
fact, pushed his fortunes in this quarter pre-
cisely because he was colourless and without
ambition. Potemkin's attitude, in short, like
M. de Segur's, stamps Mamonof as an amiable
nonentity ; though the world in general might

265

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

never have realised his limitations if Catherine
had not taken him with her, as she might have
taken a lap-dog, in her famous progress through
her dominions to the Crimea, and so exposed him
to critical eyes.

The idea of that journey, of course, was not
his. He much preferred a quiet life ; he had
not the least desire to make a show of himself ;
and if he ever had any ideas on matters of high
policy, he never ventured to propound them.
Yermolof, however, had thrown out the sugges-
tion ; Potemkin had taken it up ; and Catherine
had fallen in with it. Information had reached
Yermolof that Potemkin was making a mess
of things in the territories lately taken from
the Turks ; and he hoped that if Catherine
saw the mess, Potemkin would be discredited.
Potemkin, however, was not in the least afraid.
The journey, he knew, would not be stage-
managed by Yermolof, but by him ; and he
trusted his own genius for stage- management.
Catherine would only see what he chose to show
her, and he would only show her what she
would be pleased to see. Provisional cities
should spring up wherever she desired to find
them, like nmshrooms, in a night — even if they
disappeared again as soon as she had passed ;
and if their provisional inhabitants did not look
prosperous and contented, he would know the
reason why. So, instead of opposing Yermolof's
proposal, he merely postponed it until he had
had time to arrange the mise-en-scene ; and
266

THE ACCESSION OF MAMONOF

then, after Yermolof had fallen from his high
estate, he revived it and pressed it as the happiest
of happy thoughts.

And Catherine was delighted. The scheme
appealed to her as such dramatic conceptions
always did. She had no idea that the stage was
to be set so as to deceive her ; but she liked
the idea of a stage, and herself as the central
figure on it ; and the more she looked at it
the better it pleased her. It was a chance
of impressing Europe far more effectively than
she had impressed it by her gesticulations from
the westward window of her Palace on the Neva.
Having resolved to give the performance, she
further determined that it should be no hole-
and-corner affair, but should be given in a
magnificent style worthy of Potemkin's magni-
ficent stage-management, in the presence of
guests whose attendance would be a guarantee
against the perishing of its fame for lack of
chroniclers. The Ambassadors were the best
descriptive reporters of those days ; so she
would invite M. de Segur and Mr. FitzHerbert.
The Prince de Ligne of the Austrian Nether-
lands should also be of the party. Her old
friend Poniatowski — now Stanislas Augustus,
King of a partly partitioned Poland — and
Joseph II. of Austria, should be invited to visit
her at one of her halting-places. It should be
such a progress, in short, as the world did not
remember to have seen before, and hardly
expected to see again.

267

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

And of course she would take Mamonof with
her — much as she might have taken a spaniel
or a lap-dgg ; partly because she liked him,
and partly • because she considered herself
too great to need to make a secret of her
partialities.

268

CHAPTER XXIV

Catherine's Journey to her Crimean Dominions

The original design of Catherine's progress to
the Crimea was even more impressive than its
execution. Report and intention anticipated
still greater glories than were realised. The
splendours of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, if
not of the Durbar, pale into insignificance beside
the plan. There were to be triumphal arches,
through which the Empress was to pass in a
triumphal car, with a wreath of laurel on her
head. An immense army — six regiments of
cavalry and twenty-two of infantry — was to
escort her wherever she went. She was to be
crowned Queen of the Crimea ; and no less than
six archbishops, supported by a vast concourse
of the inferior clergy, were to superintend her
ceremonial devotions. Seven million roubles
were to be distributed in gifts ; and Catherine's
younger grandson, Constantine, was to be con-
ducted to the gates of the Ottoman dominions,
and shown to the Ottoman people as the
Prince destined to set the coping-stone on
the policy of Peter the Great, and reign over
the Moslems at the Golden Horn.

269

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

But that was not to be. The Grand Duke
Constantine fell sick of the measles, and had to
be left at home. The rumour was spread that
the purpose of the military promenade was to
trample conquered peoples in the dust. It was
not certain that all the subjected tribes would
prove subservient. There was a danger that
some of them might be frightened into hostility.
In view of that risk, the plan of the progress was
modified ; but, even so, it was designed on a
scale of magnificent grandeur. Not only the
people but also the chroniclers were impressed.
The chief of them was M. de Segur, who, courtier
though he was, had all the gifts of a good special
correspondent, including a keen eye for pictur-
esque and humorous detail; and where he fails
us, we have the lively notes of the Prince de
Ligne — fifty years old, but still as merry as a
boy, and as audacious a flatterer as ever paid a
lady the compliments which ladies enjoy. And
so the progress began on 18th January 1787, in
circumstances which inspired M. de Segur to
eloquent exclamations concerning " the spring-
time of life, when anxiety leaves neither traces
on the heart nor wrinkles on the brow." Here
is his first picture —

" The Empress took with her in her carriage
Mile Protassof ^ and Count Mamonof, who
never left her side, Count Cobentzel, the Grand

* A lady who had succeeded Countess Bruce in the role of
confidante.

270

JOURNEY TO THE CRIMEA

Equerry Narishkin, and the Grand Chamberlain
Schouvalof. I myself rode in the second
carriage, with FitzHerbert, Count Czernichef,
and the Count of Anhalt. The procession
consisted of 14 carriages, 124 sledges, and
40 supplementary vehicles. At every post
station 560 horses were waiting for us. The
days, at that season of the year, were short.
The sun, rising late, disappeared again after
six or seven hours, and the nights were terribly
black ; but the darkness was scattered by
methods of truly Oriental magnificence. On
both sides of the road, at brief intervals, there
were blazing bonfires of pine, and larch, and
cypress ; so that our track was a path of fire more
brilliant than the daylight."

Then follows an account of Catherine's daily
programme of duty and diversion —

" She rose at six, and set to work with her
ministers. Then she breakfasted, and held a
levee. We started at nine, and stopped for
dinner at two. Then we got into the carriages
again, and drove on until seven. Wherever she
arrived, she found a palace, or at any rate a
great country house, prepared for her reception ;
and we dined with her every day. After de-
voting a few minutes to her toilet, Her Majesty
joined us in the drawing-room, and chatted or
played cards until nine, when she withdrew,

and worked again until eleven."

271

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

Her talk, as she jolted over the roads, was
largely of her Empire. She spoke of its grand-
eur with a pretty modesty, calling it mon
petit menage — drawing the attention of her
companions to the fact that it was gradually
" growing larger and getting filled up." She
supposed, she said, that the grand ladies of
Paris were full of pity for them, because they
were condemned to travel " with a tiresome old
Empress in a country of barbarians and bears."
She told stories of eminent Frenchmen who,
in the days when she first flashed her signals
to the West, had assumed that she was a
barbarian, and behaved accordingly : the story,
for instance, of Mercier de la Riviere, once a
French functionary in Martinique, whom she
had invited to Russia because she had been
interested by his treatise on Political Economy.

Arriving at Moscow at a time when the
Empress was detained elsewhere, that philo-
sopher thought it would be a good idea
if he were to make himself useful by re-
organising the Russian Civil Service. He there-
fore bought three adjoining houses, knocked
them into one, transformed the reception
rooms into antechambers and the bedrooms
into offices, and painted on the various doors :
Department of Trade ; Department of Justice ;
Department of Finance, etc. etc. Catherine
discovered the comedy in progress, stopped it,
and sent the comedian about his business.
*' M. de la Riviere," she commented, " was under
272

JOURNEY TO THE CRIMEA

the impression that we walked on all fours ; and
he had been kind enough to come all the way
from the West Indies for the purpose of setting
us on our hind legs ; " a piquant reminiscence
to revive now that the glories of the great Empire
were apparent even to the least observant eye.

And so to Kief, where a halt was called until
the ice of the Dnieper melted, and the progress
could be continued by water — a halt during which
the Ambassadors were more than ever amazed
by the munificence of Catherine's hospitality.
They had come prepared to lodge and board
themselves at their own cost ; but they found
everything provided —

" An elegant villa residence was assigned to
me ; and I found it equipped with everything
that I could require. The Empress had supplied
me with a butler, valets, footmen, cooks, coach-
men, carriages, postilions, costly plate, the
finest table linen, porcelain, and the choicest
wines — everything, in short, that was necessary
to the maintenance of a stylish household.
She had strictly forbidden her people to allow
us to pay for anything whatsoever ; and from
the beginning to the end of our journey, we had
absolutely no expenses, except for the presents
which we thought it right to offer to the owners
of the houses allotted to us."

Potemkin, the stage-manager of the display,

joined the party at Kief, but kept himself in

the background as a good stage-manager should.

s 273

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

His headquarters were in a neighbouring monas-
tery, where he sprawled on a sofa in his dressing-
gown and slippers, with a dirty face and a
tumbled head of hair, curt and brusque in his
manner, apparently absorbed in playing chess
with one of his subordinates, but nevertheless,
somehow or other, getting his work done, and
conjuring up effective spectacles as required
— pageants of Empire such as no other State in
Europe could have furnished. The miscellaneous
subjects of the Empress defiled, or manoeuvred,
before her at his bidding ; and the Prince de
Ligne described his impressions, with a spark-
ling pen, in a letter to his Parisian friend, Mme
de Coigny —

" Ah ! good heavens ! what a scene before
me ! What a hurly-burly ! What diamonds,
gold, stars, and cordons \ What chains, ribbons,
turbans ! What scarlet caps, either furred or
pointed ! . .. . Louis xiv. would have been jealous
of his sister, or he would have married her, in
order to have such a splendid circle about him.
The sons of the King of the Caucasus, of Hera-
clius, for instance, who are here, would give
him more satisfaction than his five or six old
knights of St. Louis. Twenty archbishops (a
trifle unclean), with beards flowing to their
knees, are far more picturesque than the king's
chaplains in their little neckbands. The escort
of cavalry, attending a Polish nobleman,
has more of an air than his mounted police
274

JOURNEY TO THE CRIMEA

in their short jackets, preceding the melan-
choly coach, with its six sorry nags, of an
official in a flat collar and big wig ; and their
glittering sabres with jewelled hilts are much
more imposing than the white wands of the
great officers of the King of England. . . . They
have just come to see fireworks which, they
say, have cost 40,000 roubles."

Such was the pageant — though Kief only
saw the beginning of it ; and, in addition,
there were balls, banquets, and concerts, once
or twice a week ; but, in the intervals between
the formal entertainments, Catherine unbent
with the ease and charm which made her so
many friends during her life and still conciliate
even those students of her career who shake
their heads in disapprobation of her proceed-
ings. She lived, in these days, with her chosen
intimates and the Ambassadors, much as the
mistress of a great country house lives with
guests who are her equals. Eight or ten of
them dined at her table daily, and spent the
evening with her afterwards, untroubled by
any embarrassing restraints of etiquette. " The
Empress," writes M. de Segur, " disappeared,
and we only saw a charming hostess. We
told each other stories, we talked literature, we
played billiards." She appealed to him as a
poet, he tells us, to teach her to write poetry
too ; but though he tried for a whole week,
she made no perceptible progress ; and the

275

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

British Ambassador, who had a dry wit of his
own, tried to console her for her faikire —

" Ah ! madam," he said, " one cannot
achieve all kinds of glory simultaneously. In
the matter of poetry, you would have done
well to rest contented with the renown won by
the beautiful lines which you composed as an
epitaph for your pet dog —

' Here lies the Duchess Anderson,
Who bit the Dr. Rogerson.' "

That was one of the jests of the gay journey ;
and another was afforded by the merry humour
of the Prince de Ligne, who, in spite of his fifty
years, was the life and soul of the party.

Among his other accomplishments, the Prince
was an amateur doctor ; and in that capacity he
persuaded Cobentzel, the Austrian Ambassador,
to be bled for a sore throat, and M. de Segur
to take a purgative to counteract a fever. He
himself was also suffering at the time from
some trivial ailment, but left the cure to nature ;
and, a few days later, the Empress inquired
after his health. He replied that he was well :
but Catherine pressed him on the subject.
" I certainly understood that you were indis-
posed," she said. " Has the doctor cured you ? "
" No, madam ; I treated myself after a fashion
of my own." " What fashion was that ? "
*' I applied leeches to Cobentzel, madam, and
I gave Segur a black draught ; and now I am
myself again."
276

JOURNEY TO THE CRIMEA

So they trifled ; and one observes that, in
all the trifling, there was no <^=uestion of Mamonof .
He was there all the time, just as a spaniel
or a lap-dog might have been. There was no
more mystery about him than there would have
been about such a pet — no more mystery
about his sleeping-place than there would have
been about a spaniel's kennel. Catherine im-
posed him on the company, and the company
accepted him; but he cut no sort of a figure in
it. He was amiable, but of no more account
than a barber's block — a dull dog among
brilliant talkers ; overwhelmed by his patron
Potemkin, and out-classed by the wits ; feel-
ing his position painfully, as we have already
pointed out. But now, at last, the Dnieper ice
was breaking up, and the journey could be con-
tinued by water ; the fleet being " the most
imposing ever seen upon a river."

" It comprised more than eighty vessels
— the crews and passengers numbering three
thousand men. At the head of the proces-
sion floated seven galleys of immense size and
elegant design, artistically painted, and manned
by nimble sailors in gay uniforms ; the deck-
cabins richly adorned with gold and silk.

" On the galley immediately following that
of the Empress were MM. de Cobentzel and
FitzHerbert. I myself shared the second with
the Prince de Ligne. The others were assigned
to Prince Potemkin, his nieces, the Grand

277

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

Chamberlain, the Grand Equerry, the Ministers,
and the other great personages whom Catherine
had honoured with invitations to attend her.
Then, in the remaining boats, followed the
officers of lower rank, together with the baggage
and the supplies.

" On each of our galleys we found a bed-
chamber and a second apartment, luxuriously
elegant, furnished with a comfortable sofa, a
commodious bed, hung with Chinese silk, and a
mahogany writing-desk. On each galley there
was a band of musicians ; and a fleet of small
boats hovered unceasingly about the squadron,
which looked like a creation of fairyland.

" An immense concourse of people greeted
the Empress with ringing cheers when they
heard the guns fire their salutes and saw the
sailors rhythmically strike the waters of the
Dnieper with their gaudily painted oars. On
the banks stood excited crowds, assembled
from every corner of the Empire to
admire the progress and offer the productions
of their various climes in tribute to their
sovereign.''

So M. de Segur writes ; and the Prince de
Ligne, expressing his enthusiasm with charac-
teristic emphasis, adds supplementary details —

" Cleopatra's fleet left Kief as soon as a
general cannonading informed us that the ice
of the Dnieper had broken up. If anyone had
asked, on seeing us embark on our barges,
278

JOURNEY TO THE CRIMEA

great and small, to the number of eighty, with
combined crews of three thousand men, ' What
the devil we were going to do in those galleys ? '
we should have answered, ' Amuse ourselves,
and — Vogue la galere I ' for never was there a
voyage so brilliant and so agreeable. Our
chambers are furnished with Chinese silk and
divans ; and when any of those who, like myself,
accompany the Empress leaves or returns to
his galley, at least twelve musicians whom we
have on board celebrate the event. But some-
times there is a little danger at night in return-
ing after supping on Her Majesty's galley, because
we have to ascend the Dnieper, often against
the wind, in a small boat. In fact, one night
there was a tempest, in order that we might
have all experiences, and two or three galleys
grounded on a sandbank."

But tempests were few and far between.
The weather, in the main, had the fresh, in-
spiring charm of spring. There was no more
ice in the intercourse of the picnicking companions
than on the river, and the conversation sparkled
like the sun —

"We drew parallels," writes M. de Segur,
" between ancient and modern times, comparing
France to Attica, England to Carthage, Prussia*
to Macedonia, and Catherine's Empire to that
of Cyrus. Then we told stories, both old and new ;
the Empress herself entertaining us with several
anecdotes about Peter the Great and Elizabeth."

279

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

And then, from time to time, Catherine
practised modesty and self-depreciation —

" Ah yes ! " she said. " I know you rather
like me. The general effect of me pleases you.
But I'd be willing to wager that, when you go
into details, you find it easy enough to pull
me to pieces. I don't talk grammatically, and
my spelling is something shocking. M. de Segur
knows what a wooden-headed creature I am.
He gave me lessons in poetry, and I couldn't
learn to write half a dozen lines of it. In spite
of all his compliments, I'm quite sure that, if
I were a private individual living in France,
your brilliant Parisian ladies wouldn't think
me fit to ask to supper."

And so on and so forth, fishing for compli-
ments, and never failing to catch them — being
told that, if she had been born a man, she
would have been, a great diplomatist, according
to FitzHerbert, a great legislator, according
to Cobentzel, and a great soldier, according to
Segur. One can imagine no more piquant talk
for such a hostess, doing the honours of such an
Empire ; and it was always the Ambassadors
and the Prince de Ligne who kept the ball
rolling and carried off the honour of repartee,
to the exclusion alike of Potemkin and of
Mamonof. The former was always in the
background, occupied with stage - management
and ulterior designs — and also with the game
280

PONIATOWSKI

of chess and certain love affairs of his own, of
which' we will speak in their proper place. The
latter was in the foreground, sharing a state-
room with the Empress on her galley ; but
his place at the daily social reunions was purely
ornamental. He embellished the intimate
dinners, but contributed nothing to the feast
of reason. He only flashes, for a moment, into
the relation of the progress because he sulked,
and gave an exhibition of jealousy, when the
travellers arrived at Kanief, where Stanislas of
Poland, whom we know as Poniatowski, was to
be received in audience.

Poor Poniatowski ! Those who knew
Catherine best had declared that, of all her
lovers, he was the only one whom she had
really loved. He had been her confidant,
though not her colleague, when she overthrew
her husband ; and gossip had once credited her
with the intention of resigning her own throne
to share the throne which she had given him.
Instead of which, she had stripped him of a
portion of his dominions, and was now to receive
him almost as a stranger, — and at all events as a
potentate reduced to the humble rank of a vassal,
— with a new favourite installed in the place
which had once been his. One need not be sur-
prised that the Ambassadors were curious, and
clustered round, to see how he and Mamonof
" took it," and whether they glared at each other,
or smiled, or sighed.

281

CHAPTER XXV

Interview with Poniatowski — The Crimean Journey continued
— Return to St. Petersburg

Of a truth, Poniatowski' s position was a hard
one, and most men would have felt embarrassed
in his place. She who had once loved him
had despoiled him, and her diplomatic repre-
sentatives had insulted him in his capital.
The Russian Resident at Warsaw had actually
put an affront on him in his own theatre, coming
late to his box, and then insisting, in the royal
presence, that the performance should be re-
commenced for his benefit, just as if he had
been himself the King. Such memories as
that had been superimposed upon his senti-
mental memories ; and yet, the Prince de
Ligne tells us, " he spent three months and three
millions in waiting to see the Empress for three
hours." The story of her life contains no more
persuasive proof of her charm.

His coming, too, in spite of the waiting and
the expense, was as informal as he could make
it. He presented himself not as a potentate
but as a friend, assuming an incognito as he
stepped on to the barge sent to fetch him.
282

PONIATOWSKI

" Gentlemen," he said, with a smile and a
flourish of his hat, " the King of Poland begs me
to introduce Prince Poniatowski ; " and then
they rowed him to the imperial galley. The
Ambassadors, as has been said, crowded round
in order to see how he took it — and how
Catherine and Mamonof took it ; but they
had little chance of noticing anjrthing except
that Mamonof sulked. Catherine withdrew
with Poniatowski to her private cabin, and
was closeted with him there for half an hour.
The Ambassadors do not pretend to know what
passed between them. They only observed
that, when the interview was over, the Empress
looked embarrassed, and the King melancholy.

One may guess that she begged his pardon,
and blamed her Ministers and her royal and
imperial cousins for what had happened —
explaining that great Empires expanded in
obedience to the laws of nature, and that even
an Autocrat of All the Russias could not prevent
water from flowing under the bridge. One may
guess, too, that he believed her because he wished
to believe — ^because he was not a King who
set much store by his kingdom, but a senti-
mentalist to whom sentiment was the greatest
thing in the world. His pleasure, no doubt,
was a sad pleasure ; and yet one feels sure that
he would have been sorry to miss it, knowing
that, in spite of Mamonof, — over whose head
he may be supposed to have looked with polite
indifference, — he would find grief luxurious in

283

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

consecrating to Catherine yet another night of
memories and sighs.

But their private talk soon ended, and they
came out from the cabin; and the rest was
a comedy of comphments played to a gaping
gallery. There was a great banquet ; and when
the party broke up, the Empress took the
King's hat from the attendant who was holding
it for him, and gave it to him with her ovv^n
hands. " Twice to cover my head ! " he ex-
claimed, with a gallant allusion to his crown.
" Ah, madam ! this is heaping too many bene-
fits, too many claims to gratitude, upon me."
And then there was another display of fireworks.
" A representation of Vesuvius," says the
Prince de Ligne, " lasting the whole night that
we lay at anchor, lighted up the mountains, the
plains, and the river better than the brightest
sun at midday, or, I should say, kindling all
nature to a blaze. We did not know that it
was night." And then the dawn broke, and
Poniatowski took his sensibility and melancholy
back to Poland, and the travellers resumed the
progress, which Potemkin continued to stage-
manage with the same industrious ingenuity as
before.

Stage-manage is, indeed, the word ; for
many of the glories of the Empire which the
stage-manager pointed out to the party were
" properties " in the narrow theatrical sense.
He wished to give his Empress the impression
that her country was populous and prosperous,
284

THE PAGEANT OF RUSSIA

and he did so. The villages which he indi-
cated on the distant horizon were " property "
villages of painted canvas. The villages on the
banks of the river were improvised villages, in-
habited by temporary villagers, who, as soon
as the party had passed, were driven round by
a circuitous route to figure as the flourishing
and contented inhabitants of another village
farther on the way. Even the roads, where
the progress was by land, were expressly made
for the purpose of the journey — and so badly
made as practically to cease to exist as soon
as they had served their purpose ; while the
shops in the towns were stocked with mer-
chandise commandeered from other shops
elsewhere — supplied on credit, but never to be
returned or paid for. In some places, too, a
false appearance of plenty was given by a
display of bags of sand which were passed off as
sacks of wheat.

Similarly at Kherson. Potemkin had pre-
pared Catherine a throne there at a cost of
forty thousand roubles ; but the palaces in
which she was lodged, there and in the neigh-
bourhood, were only finished just in time for
her arrival, and allowed to fall into ruins im-
mediately after her departure. She found
gardens, too, which had been wildernesses a
few weeks before, and would be wildernesses
again a few weeks later ; and she was driven
past " property " country seats ; and she saw
" supers," habited as merchants, making be-

285

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

lieve to drive a roaring trade in goods brought, to
delude her, from Warsaw and Moscow ; while,
at Sebastopol, she was invited to review an
imaginary fleet, composed of superannuated
merchant vessels, rigged and equipped to look
like men-of-war. Potemkin, in short, acted
throughout on the maxim : Imperatricc vult
decipi — decipiatur.

So far as she was concerned, the deception
was complete. There were those who saw
through it ; but Catherine was not one of
them. Her commander-in-chief surhly re-
marked, when blamed for some defect in the
arrangements, that his business was to capture
towns, not to dress their shop-windows ; but
she did not take his meaning, Joseph ii.,
when received at Kherson, drew the attention
of M. de Segur to the mise- en- scene, saying that
it reminded him of the magical creations of the
Arabian Nights, of a dream which vanished
when the sleeper woke. Catherine woke, more
or less, from her dream in the end, and dis-
covered that her Empire had been almost re-
duced to bankruptcy in order to make a pleasant
holiday for her ; but no one roused her from it
at the moment. She reviewed troops and dis-
tributed decorations ; she launched ships and
founded cities ; she gave banquets and was
entertained by fireworks ; she drove under a
triumphal arch inscribed : " This way to Con-
stantinople." The peasants abased themselves
in the dust before her, lying prostrate, with
286

THE PAGEANT OF RUSSIA

their noses on the ground, and not daring to
look up till she had driven by ; and she was
fully persuaded that all was for the best in the
best of all possible Empires.

Joseph II. asked M. de Segur what he
thought of it all ; and the Ambassador made
no secret of his impressions. " There is a good
deal more show than solid reality," he said ;
and he continued —

" They begin everything here, but they never
finish anything. Potemkin soon abandons the
tasks which he initiates with such enthusiasm.
None of his projects mature or are followed up.
At Ekaterinaslav, he has laid the foundation
stone of a capital which no one will ever inhabit ;
and of a church, as large as St. Peter's at Rome,
in which, I dare say, no mass will ever be said.
The site which he has chosen for the new city
which is to be called after Catherine is a hill
with a beautiful view, but without drinking
water. Kherson, too, is badly placed, and has
cost the lives of twenty thousand men. It is
surrounded by pestilential marshes, and fully
loaded vessels cannot enter the harbour. A vast
amount of trouble has been taken to make
everything look impressive while the Empress
is here ; but all the marvels will disappear as
soon as she has gone."

To which the Emperor assented, with
qualifications, adding that what puzzled him

287

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

was that an Empress " so proud and so sensitive
about her glory " should show herself so foolishly
indulgent with " that spoiled child Mamonof."
She actually, he complained, allowed the pre-
posterous young man to join her whist-party
when she was entertaining " persons of dignity
and importance." Nor was that all —

" She even permitted the young idiot," the
Emperor grumbled, " to take the chalk with
which these Russians mark the score and draw
caricatures on the cloth ; and she actually ex-
pected us all to sit still and wait till he had
finished before going on with the game."

But Joseph, nevertheless, as has been told,
gave Mamonof a gold watch, and made him a
Count of the Holy Roman Empire. He was far
too pompous a potentate to find the Bohemian
gaiety congenial. He thought of Mamonof much
as a great lady thinks of the impudent barmaid
ox chorus-girl whom a nobleman of her ac-
quaintance has been weak enough to marry.
But he tried not to spoil sport more than he
could help, and entered into the spirit of the
conversation, to the best of his ability, by
chaffing the Prince de Ligne about the gallan-
tries of his youth : " Do you know, madam,
that he was in love with my father's mistress,
and prevented me from succeeding with a
marquise, lovely as an angel, who was the first
passion of both of us ? "
288

THE CRIMEA

That was his principal contribution to the
merriment. Having made it — and having also
talked politics which do not concern us — he gave
Mamonof a gold watch, and withdrew to his
own dominions. The others were merrier than
ever after he had gone. Catherine invited
them to play proverbs with her in her bedroom.
She told them, for fun, to " tutoyer " her, and
they called her " ta Majeste." She asked them
for stories ; and more than one of them forgot
his manners. M. de Segur told a story which,
he admits, was " just a little . . ." ; and he
was surprised to find that the Empress received
it without a smile, and abruptly changed the
subject. The Prince de Ligne got into still more
serious trouble.

He had hidden behind bushes in order to spy
upon some Mussulman women who were unveil-
ing themselves to bathe ; and, seeing that the
Empress looked dull, he told her of his adventure,
with the idea that it would cheer her up. But
Catherine turned on him with severe indignation —

" Gentlemen," she said, " this pleasantry
is in very bad taste, and sets a very bad ex-
ample. You are in the midst of a people con-
quered by my arms ; and I propose that their
laws, their religion, their morals, and their
prejudices shall be respected. If I had been
told this story without being told who was the
hero of it, I should certainly not have suspected
any of you. I should have concluded, rather, that
T 289

COMEDY OF CATHfeERINE THE GREAT

some of my pages had been guilty of the escapade ;
and I should have punished them severely."

The story is important as a proof that the
tone of the Court was not quite what one might
have been tempted to suppose. There are other
stories, it is true, from which other inferences
might be drawn. Potemkin, it is said, once paid
his too ardent addresses to a lady-in-waiting,
in the bedroom adjoining Catherine's ; and it
is further related that Catherine, being aroused
from her slumbers by the lady's screams, scolded
the lady-in-waiting for disturbing her " for
such a trifle." But that story may not be
true ; and it is, at any rate, clear that Catherine,
even when she flaunted her favourites in the
public eye, considered certain kinds of decorum
essential to her dignity.

She sometimes liked horse-play and buf-
foonery. Potemkin, as has been related, first
attracted her favourable attention through his
talents as a low comedian. The Grand Equerry,
Narishkin, was a lower comedian than Pot-
emkin, and without his brains; but there was
no courtier whose company she found more
agreeable. His chief feat during the excursion
under review was to spin a top on the table at
which the royal party was sitting. It was a top
as big as a man's head, and it contained an
explosive. It burst ; and the fragments flew
into the faces of the diplomatists who were
admiring it. If we could imagine the late Dan
290

THE CRIMEA

Leno, in the reign of the late Queen Victoria,
playing such a practical joke at the expense of
the late Lord Salisbury, at Osborne or Balmoral,
the analogy would help us.

Decidedly Catherine was a hoyden at her
hours, and still had hoydenish moods at the age
of fifty-eight ; but she had one way of unbend-
ing with her favourites and another way of un-
bending with her friends. Provocative pictures
— nude Cupids and the like — stimulated her
imagination, and her favourite's imagination,
in the alcove ; but she knew better than to
imperil her dignity by loose talk — understanding
that such talk levels social barriers in a way in
which mere romping does not. Liberties could
be taken with her, but not every kind of liberty,
though she was quick to forgive a liberty for
which proper apologies were offered ; and she had
views of her own as to the limits within which,
and the persons between whom, it was permissible
to ignore the conventional code of morality.

She lived as she chose, and she saw no
reason why Potemkin should not do the same.
We shall note, in a moment, the latitude which
Potemkin allowed himself in this respect —
the contemptuous disregard which he showed
for the forbidden degrees of the Church which
had so nearly had him for one of its monks.
Here it suffices to note his obliging anxiety
to help M. de Segur to divert himself. The
Ambassador, admiring the beauty of a Cir-
cassian woman, remarked that she was the per-

291

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

feet image of Mme de Segur. " She pleases
you ? " said the Prince. " Very well. I
happen to know that she is for sale ; so I will
buy her and give her to you." And when M.
de Segur declined his offer, he attributed his
refusal, not to moral scruples, but to false
shame, and a reluctance to lie under so great
an obligation to him : a point of view which
contrasts glaringly with some acts of severity
ascribed to Catherine, who required the recall
of a British Ambassador — Sir George Macartney
— because he had overstepped the boundaries
of circumspection in his relations with one of
the maids-of-honour.

But that is a digression ; and we must
revert to the relation of the journey. The
return was by way of Pultava and Moscow;
and we will take our glimpses of the spectacle
from the pages of the Prince de Ligne —

" For the last two months," he writes, " I
have been throwing money out of window. . . .
I have already distributed some millions, and
this is how it is done. Beside me, in the
carriage, is a great green bag, like the one
you will put your prayer-books in when you
become devout. This bag is filled with im-
perials— coins of four ducats. The inhabitants
of the villages and those from ten, fifteen, and
twenty leagues round line our route to see the
Empress, and this is how they see her. A
good quarter of an hour before she passes, they
292

THE CRIMEA

lie down flat on their stomachs and do not
rise for a quarter of an hour after we have
passed. 'Tis on their backs and on their heads,
kissing the earth, that I shower a rain of gold
while passing at full gallop, and this usually
happens ten times a day. My hands are soiled
with my beneficence. I have become the Grand
Almoner of All the Russias. He of France
throws money also through his window, but
it is his own."

There follows a comment on the stage-
management —

" I know very well how much of it is trickery :
for example, the Empress, who cannot rush
about on foot as we do, is made to believe that
certain towns for which she has given money
are finished; whereas they are towns without
streets, streets without houses, and houses
without roofs, doors, or windows. Nothing is
shown to the Empress but shops well built of
stone, colonnades of the palaces of Governors-
General, to forty-two of which she has pre-
sented silver services of a hundred covers."

The writer adds, in another letter, that,
wherever the imperial travellers banqueted,
they invariably brought their own table linen,
and as regularly left it behind — for the benefit
of one knows not whom. He goes on to tell
us that " all the carriages are filled with peaches
and oranges, and our valets are drunk with

293

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

champagne " ; but then, at Moscow, his tone
suddenly changes. Catherine had never been
popular at Moscow. " There may," she said,
" have been misunderstandings ; " and Mos-
cow, at any rate, had been the nursery of
some intrigues against her, and was the place
of residence of discarded functionaries and
favourites — "" fine ruins," as the Prince com-
mented, when some of them were presented
to him, and he was asked what he thought of
them. Moreover, at Moscow Catherine learnt
the truth — or at least a portion of it : learnt,
that is to say, that her Empire had a seamy
side which had not been shown to her —

" Alexis Orlof had the courage to tell Her
Imperial Majesty that famine had appeared in
several of the provinces. The fetes were stopped.
Beneficence displaced magnificence. Luxury
yielded to necessity. No more money was
thrown ; it was now distributed. The torrents
of champagne ceased flowing ; thousands of
bread-carts succeeded the boat-loads of oranges.
A cloud obscured, for a moment, the august and
serene brow of Catherine the Great : she shut
herself up with two of her Ministers, and only
recovered her gaiety as she got into the carriage."

And so back, at last, to St. Petersburg, where
the reign of Mamonof, of whom we have found so
little to say, was presently to come to an end.

294

CHAPTER XXVI

Retirement of Mamonof and Accession of Plato Zubof

In the story of the deposition of Mamonof,
human nature once more flashes out amid the
splendid artificialities of Court life. It reads
like a play ; and a play has in fact been made
of it — a piece called The Favourites, written
by Mme Birch - Pfeiffer, produced at Berlin
in 1831, and suppressed in consequence of
remonstrances from the Russian Embassy.
There was hardly any need for the author to
alter, supplement, or embellish the facts, as
we get them presented in Catherine's own
letters and authentic contemporary memoirs.
The theme, albeit with a variation or two, is
the old one : May mated with December, and
tiring of the union ; December more ardent
than May, and unable to understand, until a
sudden revelation lets in the light, why May
is so sad and irresponsive.

Catherine, when the crisis came, was over
sixty, and Mamonof was approximately thirty.
She had enriched him, and ennobled him, and
made much of him ; she had paid his debts

295

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

with a lavish hand, even when the Treasury
was at its emptiest ; so far as she could see,
he had nothing whatever to complain of. But
the caged bird always longs for freedom, how-
ever gaudily the cage is gilded ; and May
mated to December is always longing to turn
back and throw the handkerchief to April.
Mamonof, in short, had little to complain
of except that Catherine had passed her
sixtieth birthday before he had passed his
thirtieth ; but that was a sufficient cause of
discontent : the more so as he was expected
always to be on duty — always to be dancing
attendance.

He would probably have said that Catherine
was " well enough " — a charming woman to
know on the terms on which Segur, and Fitz-
Herbert, and Cobentzel, and the Prince de
Ligne knew her ; but he knew her, and was
known to know her, on quite other terms.
She made him ridiculous — more and more
ridiculous as the years went by ; and ridicule
is fatal to romance. He had never had the
nerve, or the cynicism, to exploit his relations
with her — he had only been weak ; and he
grew tired of wasting the best years of his
life as an old woman's darling. He wanted
an adventure in which his heart should be
engaged. His feelings were reflected in his
manner, and Catherine had to take notice.

Jealousy was the card she played — not
displaying jealousy, but trying to arouse it.
296

FALL OF MAMONOF

She named names, and threw out dark hints.
There was a certain Kazarinof — there might
be others. If Mamonof imagined that he was
the only man in the world who . . . etc. . . .
But when a woman of sixty talks like that,
one knows that her heart is more uneasy than
capricious. If Catherine had really had a
fresh caprice, she would have acted on it with
as little ceremony as usual. Mamonof would
have received notice that his place was filled,
and that his retiring allowance would be —
whatever she chose to fix, though something very
liberal, we may be sure. As it was, her lover
sulked, and feigned illness ; and the overtures
for reconciliation came from her. But she had
her suspicions ; and she confided them to her
secretary Chrapowicki —

"Have you heard what has been going
on?"

" Yes, madam."

'' I have been suspecting it for a whole
eight months. He kept away from everybody ;
he avoided even me. He said he had heart
trouble, and couldn't leave his room. Then
he said that he was troubled by scruples of
conscience, and could not go on living with
me as he had done. The traitor ! He loved
another, and his duplicity kept him dumb.
If his passion had really mastered him, why
couldn't he speak out and say so ? You can-
not imagine what I have suffered."

297

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

It seems amazing that an Empress of sixty
should have talked like that to her political
secretary ; but we have to do with facts.
The report of her speech is taken from Chrapo-
wicki's Diary. She went on to tell her queerly
chosen confidant how, after suspecting a portion
of the truth, she had dragged the whole of it
to light.

Mamonof's sulks and indifference had set
her thinking. An idea had occurred to her,
and she had resolved to bring matters to a
head. Since her lover was tired of the gilded
cage, he should leave it. She herself would
show him out, and arrange his destiny after his
retreat — or, at all events, she would propose
to do so, and see what he said.

" I wrote him a note suggesting that he had
better retire, and showing him how he could
do so with brilliant prospects. I had an idea
of arranging a marriage for him with the
daughter of Countess Bruce. She is only
thirteen ; but I know that she is already a
woman, fully grown."

One can only guess what was at the back
of Catherine's brain : whether she expected
Mam.onof to accept or to refuse ; whether
she wished to take the initiative in a separation
which she realised to be inevitable, or looked
forward and saw herself as the child-wife's
successful rival. Evidently, she was in a
298

FALL OF MAMONOF

desperate mood, and ready for desperate
measures. Whatever she expected, it did not
happen ; for Mamonof had a surprise in store
for her —

'* Thereupon, he ran to me and, in trembling
accents, confessed that he was in love with
the little Cherbatof, and had been engaged
to be married to her for the last six months.
Picture my feelings ! "

They are not hard to picture. The spretce
injuria formce is doubtless as painful on a throne
as in humbler stations of life. Mamonof was
the third lover — the third, if not the fourth —
who had inflicted the affront. And Catherine
was sixty-two — an age at which every moment
is precious and no time can be wasted. She
must make haste to play her part, making it
appear to the world that she had willed the
separation which she could not avoid. Already
she had made her choice ; now she confirmed
it ; and the secretary perceived for what
reason she had called him into her counsel
and wept over her griefs to him.

She was giving him audience in her bed-
chamber ; and she now handed him a ring, and
a bag containing notes for ten thousand roubles.
The bag was to be placed under the pillow of the
bed which was, as it were, the Downing Street
of Favourites ; the ring was to be handed to
young Plato Zubof, aged twenty-two. " He is

299

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

a young man of good manners," wrote Bez-
borodko to Vorontsof, " but of very poor in-
telligence. I don't think he will hold his place
long." He was to hold it, in fact, as long as
there was such a place to be held by any man ;
he was to exploit it as Mamonof could not, and
to triumph over ridicule by his immeasurable
insolence. But of that presently. The story of
the parting from Mamonof has to be finished
before we come to it.

A barbarous story has been told of Cather-
ine's vengeance. Six men, disguised as women,
burst, it is said, into the bridal chamber, stripped
the bride of her nightdress, and birched her
in the bridegroom's presence, saying, when
they had finished the infliction of the dis-
cipline, " This is the way the Empress
punishes a first indiscretion. For the second,
people are sent to Siberia." That anecdote,
however, though in keeping with Russian
manners and customs, is not in keeping with
what we know of Catherine, or with what we
know of the facts of this particular case. If
the thing was done at all, it must have been
done without her knowledge, — at the instance,
possibly, of Mamonof's insolent successor, — and
even that is improbable. Catherine was very
feminine, but she was not a Fury ; and there
is no record of her having ever punished an
infidelity otherwise thau by reprisals.

Her rival, being one of her maids - of -
honour, was married from the Palace ; and
300

MARRIAGE OF MAMONOF

Catherine herself, according to the custom,
helped to dress her for the ceremony. The
story that she contrived to make her scream by
running a large pin into her in the process may
or may not be true. It is not a serious matter,
and would indicate pique rather than rancour.
The wedding presents, at any rate, were on a
generous scale. It was intimated to Mamonof
that he must leave St. Petersburg and live at
Moscow among the " magnificent ruins " re-
marked in that city by the Prince de Ligne ;
but he was given a hundred thousand roubles
and three thousand serfs. Moreover, Catherine
continued to correspond with him ; and, both
before and after the installation of Zubof in his
place, she caressed the belief that, in spite of
appearances, he loved her still.

" Every one is amazed," the secretary
ventured to say, "that your Majesty should
have consented to the marriage."

" God be with them," Catherine replied.
" I hope they will be happy. But, observe. I
have forgiven them. I have authorised their
union. They ought to be in a perfect ecstasy of
delight. But they are not. I have seen them
both in tears. His old affection for me is not
dead. For the last week, I have observed his eyes
following me wherever I go. Strange, isn't it ? "

Perhaps it was not so strange. Most likely
Catherine had misread the meaning of the signs

301

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

which she had observed. Most likely what
she took for tenderness was really nervousness
and apprehension. But the touch is very
feminine — very full of human nature. It
marks the great difference between the amours
of Catherine and those of Louis xv. — the differ-
ence, in fact, between sentiment and sensuality.
There is another feminine touch in the letter
written to Grimm soon after Mamonof's de-
parture. Catherine, we now see, is not angry
with Mamonof, but sorry for him because he
has gained no adequate compensation for the
tenderness which he has lost —

" The pupil of Mile Cardel, having found
Master Red Coat more worthy of her pity
than of her indignation, and believing that he
will be terribly punished as long as he lives
by an absurd passion which has made people
laugh at him and denounce him as ungrateful,
has made all possible haste to wind the matter
up, to the satisfaction of every one concerned.
There is every reason to believe that he and his
wife are not getting on very well together."

We can lay our fingers on one of the reasons,
and very possibly it was the only one. It
appears in a letter which Mamonof wrote to
Catherine in December 1792. He was unhappy,
he said. It pained him to be separated from her.
She had been very good to him, but — might he not
return to St. Petersburg in order to be near her ?
302

ZUBOF

Catherine was delighted, and not in the
least surprised. " You see. He is unhappy.
I knew he would be," she said to the secretary,
who had placed the bag of roubles under
Zubof s pillow. It was no part of that young
man's business to contradict her ; but her
biographer may nevertheless have his doubts,
and suspect that the appeal was the bitter
cry not of the lover but of the exile. Moscow
was dull, and Mamonof sighed for the livelier
excitements of St. Petersburg. He wanted a
passport, and this was the way of asking for it
most likely to meet with a favourable response.
One gathers from the sequel that the request
was only half-hearted after all.

There was a feminine touch of hesitation
in Catherine's reply. She neither consented
nor refused — she procrastinated. Mamonof
should come to see her some day — next year,
perhaps, if she did not change her mind — but
not at present. There were reasons — the
principal reason, no doubt, was young Zubof ;
but she took the tone, at sixty-three, of a
woman sure of her lover, but afraid of her own
weakness. " To stroll in the garden with him
for an hour or two — that would be well enough,"
she said to Chrapowicki ; " but to have him
always with me — that is another matter al-
together." So she put him off, and told him to
spend another year among the " ruins."

At the end of the year she beckoned ; but
though she had not changed her mind, Mamonof

303

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

had changed his. He would not come, and one
can guess his reasons. Zubof had had time to
show himself strong as well as unscrupulous
and iD<5olent ; . and Mamonof had no desire to
make himself ridiculous. He had plenty of
roubles and adequate estates ; and he pre-
ferred a quiet life, even at the cost of permanent
exclusion from the capital.

So Zubof reigned in his stead, and reigned
far more completely. Mamonof had been
Potemkin's docile nominee ; but Zubof was
Potemkin's formidable rival — undermining his
influence and threatening his overthrow. All
through the years which we have been passing
under review, Potemkin had been ruling
Russia, either through Catherine's favourites or
over their heads ; and we will return to Potemkin
before filling up the picture of Zubof's ascend-
ancy.

304

CHAPTER XXVII

Zubof and Potemkin — The great Stage-Managers of Catherine's
Empire — Particularities of Potemkin's Private Life

Potemkin is, of all the men of Catherine's
reign, the hardest to believe in — and that
though one can collect more information about
him than about any of the others. Judging
him by results, we are bound to pronounce him
a man of genius ; but that phrase is vague — a
formula rather than a picture. It still leaves
the Western mind wondering how such results
could have been achieved by such a man : a
man whose personal eccentricities and apparent
slackness, superimposed upon the eccentricities of
the Slav, impress one as a Pelion of absurdity
heaped upon an Ossa of barbarism. His
Western contemporaries were agreed that he
would have come to no good in any Western
State. M. de Segur says as much in so many
words. But M. de Segur also admits that, in
Russia, he was marvellous. Let us glance back,
even at the risk of repetition, and see how his
career differed from the careers of the men who
preceded and succeeded him in Catherine's
gilded cage.

u 305

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

To begin with, he started with an unfavour-
able handicap, being the least prepossessing of
the suitors. As a rule, Catherine chose her
lovers not for their intelligence but for their
good looks ; and Potemkin was ugly — an un-
kempt giant, of brusque, uncourtly manners, —
with only one eye, and a squint in it, — ridiculed
by the handsome Gregory Orlof as " Cyclops."
Yet Catherine deposed an Adonis to make
room for him — and did so at his instigation.
He may not have been the only man who ever
formally applied for the post of favourite.
There is a story of an officer who once hid
himself behind the curtains in Catherine's bed-
chamber in the hope of declaring his passion at
an opportune moment in auspicious circum-
stances. That intruder, however, was turned
out (if the story be true) and sent home to his
mother, with a request that she would take
better care of him for the future. Potemkin, as
we have seen, asked for the position of " general
aide-de-camp " — much as another officer might
have asked for a staff appointment — and got it.
One may distinguish him, therefore, in the first
place, as the favourite who imposed himself.

One may distinguish him, in the second
place, as the favourite whose preferment was
only a lower rung on the ladder of ambition.
The others, having climbed so high, aspired to
climb no higher. Having adorned the gilded
cage, they were content, thereafter, to adorn
private stations, living their own lives, with
306

POTEMKIN

wives of their own choice, and plenty of money
in their pockets. Potemkin looked beyond.
He had been favourite but a short time when he
aspired to be Emperor. When the question
of his retirement was first raised, he talked of
demanding the crown of Poland as the condition
of his retreat ; and, in the end, he manoeuvred
himself into a position akin to that of Warwick
the King-maker — the nominator of his own
successors, strong enough to depose them when
they crossed his path, and the real ruler of
Russia in everything except the name.

And that for a period of some seventeen
years, though his personal tenure of the office
of favourite lasted for less than two years. The
others came and went : Zavadovski, Zoritch,
Korsakof, Lanskoi, Yermolof, Mamonof ; and
throughout the reign of every one of them
Potemkin continued to be the power behind the
throne. When Yermolof intrigued against him,
he flicked Yermolof away like an insect. Not
until Zubof arose did he encounter a rival whose
rivalry threatened to be formidable ; and that
tussle was ended not by his defeat but by his
death. And by that time, he was rich beyond
the dreams of avarice, — the number of his
roubles being computed at 50,000,000, — had
achieved every distinction that it was in
Catherine's power to bestow, and looked down
not upon Russia only but upon Europe, from
sublime heights of arrogance, like those heroes
of Greek tragedy whom jealous Fate destroys.

307

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

The Prince de Ligne asked him once whether
he would Hke to be Hospodar of Moldavia and
Wallachia. " Pooh ! " he replied. " What sort
of a position is that ? Why, I could be King
of Poland if I liked, and I have already de-
clined to be Duke of Courland. The position
I occupy is of more account than any of those."
Another time, apropos of nothing, he said to one
of the Engelharts, with the arrogant melancholy
of the man who has earned his title to decide
whether all is vanity or not —

" I wonder. Could a man be more fortunate
than I have been ? All my wishes have been
fulfilled — all my desires gratified — as if by
magic. I sought positions of great responsi-
bility — I have held them. I wanted Orders —
they have been showered upon me. I loved
gambling — I have been privileged to lose in-
calculable sums. I liked to entertain — I have
entertained magnificently. I wanted to buy
land — I own as much land as a man could
wish for. I wanted to build houses — I have
been able to build palaces. I have always
been fond of jewellery — no private individual
in the world has such a collection of jewels
as I have. In short, I have been overwhelmed
with Fortune's favours."

He concluded the monologue by smashing a
costly piece of porcelain and retiring to lock
himself up in his room, as if disgusted with
his surfeit of good things. One may cite the
308

POTEMKIN

mood, as Mr. Belloc has cited the later moods
of Louis XV., as an example of " the despair
which follows the satisfaction of the flesh " ;
but one cannot charge him with magnifying
his grandeur and glories. He only stated facts.
He had really climbed to the pinnacle to which
he pointed, and had kept his place on it ;
and he had done so without displaying con-
spicuous competence in his more important
undertakings, and with complete disregard of
the rules ordinarily laid down for the attainment
of success in life. One cannot picture him walk-
ing by a straight path to a great end. The im-
pression is rather of a man swaggering insolently
to his goal by any road which it suits his whim
to take — a Superman, in short, perfectly sure
of himself, and therefore absolutely careless
of criticism, indifferent to opinion, and as
recklessly self-indulgent as the most unabashed
voluptuary.

We have spoken of him as a great stage-
manager. He sometimes reminds one of the
late Sir Augustus Harris, who was also, in his
way, a man of genius. If we could imagine
the late Sir Augustus Harris entrusted with a
task more proper to Lord Kitchener, tackling
it with supreme self-confidence, not in Lord
Kitchener's way but in his own, conducting
a campaign on the lines of a Drury Lane panto-
mime, and making at least a spectacular success
of it, we should have a partially accurate
portrait of him. But the portrait would only

309

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

be partial. On the other hand, we have to
think of Potemkin as a modern Russian ana-
logue of Xerxes : a sort of self-made Xerxes,
exaggerating the Persian monarch's sloth and
love of pleasure, yet with an ample fund of
latent energy, capable of rising to an occa-
sion, and rushing from his headquarters
in Capua to distinguish himself at the post
of danger.

Stories of his insolent manners abound ;
but they generally end with some indication
that he meant no harm, was only " off-handed,"
and bore no malice when his brusque manners
were resented. Once, he invited the French
Ambassador to dinner ; and when the guest,
as a matter of course, arrived in his uniform
and decorations, the host slopped late into
the room, and took his place at the head of
the table in morning dress and slippered ease.
But when M. de Segur returned his invitation,
and deliberately received him with an equal
lack of ceremony, he laughed good-humouredly
and admitted that the score was fair. On
another occasion, he interrupted an audience
which he was giving to M. de Segur in order
to converse with his tailor and other tradesmen,
and the Ambassador withdrew indignantly, de-
clining to leave any memorandum of requests
so cavalierly received ; but he afterwards learnt
that Potemkin had carefully attended to the
whole conversation, and taken instant steps to
comply with his demands.
310

POTEMKIN

Nor are stories less numerous of the luxury

— not to say the debauchery — prevailing at
his military headquarters. At his headquarters
at Bender, for instance, in 1791, his estab-
lishment included five or six hundred domestic
servants, two hundred musicians, a troupe of
actors, and twenty jewellers. He even sent
an invitation (though it was not accepted) to
Mozart to join him, at a lavish salary, as pianist
and musical director. Conceiving the desire to
see the " tzigane " danced, and being informed
that two officers in the army of the Caucasus
danced it particularly well, he summoned them

— a whole week's journey — in order to give
their performance, and recompensed them for
their foolery by promoting them to field rank.
At another time, in the midst of some exciting
operations of war, he dispatched two officers
of his staff on fantastic errands : the one to
fetch perfumes from Florence, and the other
to buy jewels in Paris. We read, too, of fetes
given at his headquarters, at which every one
of the two hundred ladies present was given
a costly shawl, and invited to help herself
from a crystal goblet filled with diamonds ;
while another graphic description of those
headquarters runs as follows : —

" There he sat, entirely given over to love,
like a veritable Sultan in the midst of his harem.
. . . The apartment was divided into two parts.
In the outer room, the men played cards ;

311

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

while in the inner room, the Prince sat on a
sofa with the ladies, turning his back on all
of them except Princess Dolgoruki, whose place
was close to the wall, and often appearing to
forget that he was not alone with her."

It is related, too, that he hardly ever mounted
a horse, but, when he visited the lines, drove
round them in a carriage ; and there is a story
of his having sent an indignant message to the
general commanding the artillery to inquire
what he meant by making such a disgust-
ing noise with his guns. Such proceedings,
it will be agreed, do not, in a general
way, conduce to military efficiency ; but
Potemkin was only relatively inefficient, and
his luxurious indolence must have been largely
affectation. Just as when giving audience to
M. de Segur, so when lounging on the sofa
with the ladies, he was wider awake than he
seemed to be. On the whole, he knew what
was going on. He could wake up, and risk
his life in the trenches without moving a
muscle when cannon - balls mowed down the
men to whom he was talking. He could order
a victory, or the capture of a fortress, with no
more ado than if he had been ordering a dinner
— and he could take the credit, though Suvarof
did the work.

Our completest picture of him at this period
is from the graphic pen of the Prince de
Ligne —
312

POTEMKIN

" I see the commander of an army, who
seems to be lazy, and works without ceasing ;
who has no desk but his knees, no comb but
his fingers ; always in bed and never sleep-
ing, day or night, because his ardour for his
sovereign, whom he adores, incessantly agitates
him. . . . Unhappy because so fortunate ; blase
about everything, easily disgusted ; morose,
inconstant ; a profound philosopher, able
minister, splendid politician, child of ten years
old . . . with one hand giving proofs of his
liking for women, with the other making signs
of the cross ; his arms in crucifix at the feet
of the Virgin, or round the necks of those who,
thanks to him, have ceased to be virgins . . . ;
gambling incessantly, or else never touching a
card ; preferring to give rather than pay his
debts ; enormously rich, yet without a penny
. . . ; talking theology to his generals, and war
to his archbishops ; never reading, but picking
the brains of those with whom he talks, and
contradicting them in order to learn more ;
presenting the most brutal or the most pleasing
aspect, manners the most repulsive or the
most attractive ; with the mien of the proudest
satrap of the Orient, or the cringing air of
Louis xiv.'s courtiers . . . ; wanting all things
like a child, able to go without everything like
a great man ; sober with the air of a gourmand ;
biting his nails, or munching apples or turnips,
scolding or laughing, dissembling or swearing,
playing or praying, singing or meditating . . . ;

313

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

always in a shirt and no drawers, or else in a
uniform embroidered on every seam ; feet bare
or in spangled slippers, without cap or hat
(as I saw him once under fire) ; in a shabby
dressing-gown or a splendid tunic, with his
three stars, ribbons, and diamonds as big as
my thumb round the portrait of the Empress,
which always attracts the bullets ; bent double,
huddled up, when in his own room ; tall, his
nose in the air, proud, handsome, noble,
majestic, or seductive when he shows himself
to his army with the air of an Agamemnon
amid the kings of Greece."

" What is his magic ? " the Prince asks
himself, and his answer to his question is :
" Genius, and then genius, and again genius."
No one else can say any more, unless it be to
qualify and define the genius. It certainly
cannot be defined, in his case, as the power of
taking infinite pains. It was far rather the
power of making a very little pains go a very
long way ; and it was, above everything, the
power of an overwhelming personality — irre-
sistible in spite of its limitations. Potemkin,
in short, reminds one of a torrent, which does
not always flow, but, when it does flow, sweeps
all obstacles before it. Neither his mistakes
nor his slackness — still less his excesses and
dissolute levity — availed to impair his pre-
dominance. He ruled in Russia, without refer-
ence to these drawbacks, much as a grown
314

POTEMKTN

person can assert ascendancy in a nursery,
however eccentric his habits and however
deplorable his morals. When he chose to fill
the stage, there was no room on it for a rival,
but only room for coadjutors.

One cannot leave him, however, without a
further reference to those eccentric morals,
which would have hampered his progress in
any country but Russia, but there did him
little harm in the eyes either of the Empress
or of her subjects. He ignored the forbidden
degrees, as if laws were not made for him.
" Barinka is very ill," Catherine once wrote to
him. " If your departure is the cause of her
illness, you are very wrong. You will jkill
her." And Barinka was Barbe Engelhart —
Potemkin's niece — one of five nieces to whom
he successively made love, albeit making love
to various other women at the same time.

Barbe was fickle and Potemkin was fickle
too. Finding a love-letter, not in her hand-
writing, in the pocket of that dressing-gown
of which we have heard so much, she married
Prince Galitzin ; but that was not the end.
After the marriage, the quarrel was made up,
and we find uncle and niece once more ad-
dressing each other in their correspondence as
" my treasure " and " my life." But Potemkin
was already making love to Alexandrine, who
was the wife of Count Branicki ; and he also
paid his court, at undetermined dates, to
Nadiejda, Catherine, and Tatiana ; and then

315

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

came his passion for his cousin's wife, Prascovia
Potemkin, to wliom he wrote (a brief extract
from the communication will suffice) —

" Come to me, my mistress ! Make haste,
my love, my joy, my priceless treasure — the
unparalleled gift which God Himself has given
me. I only live for you, and all my life shall
be spent in proving my devotion to you.
Darling, darling, let me have the delight of
seeing you again ; grant me the joy which I
derive from the beauty of your face and your
soul. With all tenderness I kiss your pretty
little hands and your pretty little feet."

But even Prascovia Potemkin had two
rivals — two rivals, if not more : the lady who
afterwards became notorious as Countess Po-
tocka, and the beautiful Princess Dolgoruki.
In this last case there was an angry husband
to be dealt with ; but Potemkin dealt with him.
He gripped him, when he remonstrated, by
the cordons of the distinguished Orders which
he wore, and roared at him in a voice of thunder,
" Miserable wTetch ! I gave you these decora-
tions, as I have given them to all those who
wear them. You deserve them as little as the
rest. You are dirt to me — one and all of you ;
and I shall do what I like with you — and also
with whatever belongs to you." And he with-
drew, with the Princess, to the scenes of splendid
luxury thus described by Langeron —
316

POTE^nClN

".The Prince," Langeron writes, " had
pulled down, during my absence, one of the
apartments of the house he occupied, and had
built a kiosk in which the treasures of two
hemispheres were displayed for the temptation
of the beauty he proposed to subject to his
sway. Gold and silver glittered everywhere.
On a sofa of rose and silver, fringed and em-
broidered with flowers and ribbons, one saw
the Prince, in costly neglige attire, seated beside
the object of his devotion, in the midst of
a court of five or six women, whose jewels
heightened their charms, and before whom
fragrant incense was burnt in golden vessels.
A cold collation, served in precious porcelain
dishes, stood in the centre of the room."

There we may leave the ]:>ictare, remarking
merely that such a lover as we have described
was obviously the last man in the world to
submit to the restrictions of Catlierine's gilded
cage. As well might she have tried to catch
a bear in a mouse-trap or keep a lion in an
aviary. Natiu'ally, being the man that he
was, he was out of the cage almost as soon
as he was confined in it ; and he was not
in the least like the bird whose only use for
freedom is to spread its wings and fly away.
On the contrary, he used his freedom openly,
shamelessly, and aggressively, in the ways
which we have seen — living liis own life while
he served the State; and Catherine acquiesced,

317

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

and even applauded, as her letter about Bar-
inka proves.

His devotion to her, however, survived his
infidelity, though he insisted on showing it in his
own way, and keeping it within the limits which
he himself assigned. His determination that
nothing should interfere with his polygamy
was far firmer than her resolution that nothing
should interfere with her polyandry ; and each
of them came in the end to respect the ex-
pansiveness of the other's ardent nature. From
time to time Potemkin still gives us the im-
pression of courting Catherine — albeit only
with the air of a gallant who neither proposes
nor expects to be embarrassed by being taken
too seriously. The rumour got abroad, and
(though there is almost certainly no truth in it)
has been repeated by responsible chroniclers,
that she had secretly married him. The
authorship is attributed to him of a passionate
love-song in the vein of " the desire of the moth
for the star " ; and his letters to her (and her
letters to him) are often of lyric intensity —
albeit written at a time when he was notori-
ously diverting himself with other women, and
she with other men.

Tlie psychological situation, in short, is far
too complex to be analysed — one can only state
the facts and leave the puzzle unresolved.
One may fancy that Catherine regretted the
one lover who assuredly would have been her
master if they had met on equal terms; over
318

POTEMKIN

whom she had no superiority except the acci-
dental one that she was a sovereign and he a
subject; who could still dictate to her after he
had ceased to be her lover, and never failed to
do so with loyal zeal for her interests. One may
attribute Potemkin's pessimism in the midst of
his Sardanapalian revels to a secret hankering
after the simpler satisfaction which he could,
or believed that he could, have found in un-
divided and disinterested love. But one can
say nothing confidently except that his nature
and hers were alike complex; that their moods
varied; that there is no escaping in either case
from the impression of a multiple personality.

That said, we may leave Potemkin and pass
on to Zubof — the only one of the later favourites
who was not Potemkin's creature, and who,
instead of accepting Potemkin as his patron and
master, set himself, with an arrogance which
excited remark even in Russia, to open the
world, his oyster, with his own sword, and carve
his way independently to the fortune of which
he was ambitious.

3VJ

CHAPTER XXVIII

Return of Potemkin to St. Petersburg — Rumours of liis
Marriage to Catherine — His Death

It was in 1789 that Ziibof stepped into the place
left vacant by Mamonof's marriage. Catherine
was now sixty — an age at which a woman
necessarily feels that, if she still owes a debt to
sentiment, she must pay it at once, or never pay
it at all. So she made haste, as we have seen,
enthroning a new favourite, with enthusiasm —
or, at all events, with an affectation of enthusi-
asm : partly, one supposes, as a demonstration
against Mamonof ; partly to convince herself,
as well as those about her, that her heart was
as young as ever.

Potemkin received her confidences. " I have
come back to life again," she wrote to him, " as
a frozen fly does when it thaws. I am, as
you see, once more well and cheerful." And she
spoke of her new lover as " my child " and " my
little darky," and went on : " the amiability of
his character makes me more amiable too."
The pleasant words were a challenge ; for the
rule that Potemkin must be consulted in these
matters had now been broken for the first time
320

ZUBOF

for many years. But Potemkin made no move.
Increasing years and riotous living had doubtless
undermined his energy, though they had not
impaired his self-confidence. He could not be
troubled to make a fuss, assuming that, whenever
he did rouse himself, he would be able to treat
Zubof as he had treated Yermolof — flick him
away, that is to say, as if he were some noxious
insect. But that showed not only that he did
not know Zubof, but even that he did not quite
know Catherine.

Zubof, at twenty-two, appeared to most
people merely a good-looking young blockhead —
" well mannered but of limited intelligence,"
wrote Bezborodko, already quoted ; but that
was a mistake. His amiability was only a
means to an end — a mask temporarily covering
the arrogance of an insufferable puppy ; his
strength lay neither in his amiability nor in
his intellect, but in his will. He was sublimely
unscrupulous and immovably obstinate ; and
he had a low cunning which was a serviceable
substitute for talent. He knew what he wanted,
and knew how to get it ; he had audacity and
nerve, and was not to be frightened from the
course he meant to follow. Above all, he knew
how to work upon an old woman's weakness,
and make that weakness a buckler against his
enemies.

And Catherine, on her part, was at once

weak and strong, being in love with love, and

knowing that, at her age, it was easier to lose love

X 321

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

than to recover it. Zubof at least made love
to her charmingly, and she was grateful. There
exists a note in her handwriting in which she
tells Zubof that she is so glad she " pleased him
last night." She enjoyed being girlish like
that ; and she could not be sure that another
lover would accept her girlishness in the same
gay and gallant spirit. Hence, inevitably, a
disposition to fight hard against any attempt
to rob her of what might be her very last chance
of finding happiness in love. She might be
lectured ; she might be laughed at ; but she
would be firm. That, indubitably, was the
sentiment behind which the last of her lovers
was entrenched. The number of roubles
amassed by him in his entrenchments is said
to have been 3,500,000; and he was so little
afraid of Potemkin that he set his brother
Valerian as a spy to watch him at his head-
quarters with the army, and laid all manner
of unfavourable reports before Catherine as to
his extravagance and incapacity.

At last, however, in 1791, we see Potemkin
roused from his apathy, and appearing in
St. Petersburg; and, for a moment, we see
Catherine's old enthusiasm for him revived —

" To look at Marshal Potemkin," she wrote
to the Prince de Ligne, " one would say that
victories improve a man's appearance. He has
come to us from the army, beautiful as the
day, blithe as a bird, bright as a star, wittier
322

ZUBOF

than ever, no longer biting his nails, but giving
a series of entertainments, each more magnificent
than its predecessor.*'

It is to the period of these dazzling en-
tertainments that gossip assigns the secret
marriage. That Catherine may have consented
to go through the ceremony is not absolutely
unthinkable; and her Minister might have
found some ground of satisfaction in such a
secret assertion of his power over her, in spite
of her relations with Zubof. It is not an
ordinary attitude, but Potemkin was not an
ordinary man ; still, there is no positive evidence,
and the probability is strong that, if the thing
had actually happened, other evidence than
that of irresponsible gossip would, by this time,
have come to light. So it is safer to be sceptical,
and we may quit the subject with a glance at the
glittering splendours of the reception which
Potemkin gave in Catherine's honour on the eve
of his return to the seat of war —

" A whole month was consumed in prepara-
tions. Artists of all kinds were employed,
whole warehouses emptied. Several hundred
persons attended daily to rehearse the re-
spective parts they were to perform, and each
rehearsal was a kind of entertainment. . . .

" The company began to assemble in mas-
querade dresses at six in the evening.
When the carriage of the Empress approached,

32a

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

meat, drink, and clothes were profusely dis-
tributed among the populace assembled at
the outer doors. The Prince handed the
Empress from her coach. He was dressed in a
scarlet coat, over which hung a long cloak of
gold lace, ornamented with precious stones.
Ho wore as many diamonds as a man can wear
in his dress. His hat, in particular, was so
loaded with them that he was obliged to have
it carried by one of his aides-de-camp.

" On Her Majesty's entering the hall of the
palace, a beautiful symphony, performed by
more than three hundred musicians, resounded
from the lofty gallery to greet her appearance.
Thence she proceeded to the principal saloon,
attended by a brilliant concourse. Here she
took her seat upon a kind of throne surrounded
with transparencies decorated with appropriate
mottoes and inscriptions. . . .

" The Grand Dukes Alexander and Constant-
ine, at the head of the most beautiful young per-
sons of the Court, danced a ballet. The dancers
were forty-eight in number, all dressed uniformly
in white, and wearing scarfs and girdles set with
diamonds worth above ten millions of roubles.
The music was taken from known songs analo-
gous to the festivity; and the dance was in-
terrupted with singing. The famous ballet-
master, Le Picq, concluded the performance with
a pas seul of his own composition.

" The company now passed into another
saloon hung with the richest tapestry of the
324

POTEMKIN

Gobelins, in the centre of which stood an
artificial elephant, covered with emeralds and
rubies. A richly dressed Persian acted as his
guide. . . . After this spectacle several choruses
were sung ; country dances succeeded ; and
these were followed by a grand Asiatic proces-
sion, remarkable for the great diversity of the
national dresses of the different nations subjected
to the sceptre of the Empress.

" Soon after, every room of the palace,
brilliantly lighted up for the occasion, was
thrown open to the amazed crowd. The whole
palace seemed in a blaze ; the garden was
covered with sparkling stones. Numerous
mirrors, crystal pyramids and globes reflected
this magnificent spectacle in every direction.
All the windows of the winter garden, which
serve also for so many doors to pass into the
summer garden, were hidden by shrubs and fruit-
bearing trees, which appeared on fire ; and while
the eye contemplated this brilliant scene with a
delicious rapture, the exquisite perfume of a
variety of perfuming-pans, concealed behind
flowers of all sorts, led the enchanted spectators
to believe that it actually proceeded from their
illuminated branches. . . .

" When supper was announced, six hundred
persons sat down to table. Potemkin stood
behind the chair of the Empress, to wait upon
Her Majesty ; and he did not sit down before she
repeatedly ordered him to be seated. Those of
the company who could not find room at the

325

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

table were entertained at the sideboards. The
plate was all gold and silver. The most ex-
quisite dishes were served up in rich vases ; the
most delicious wines flowed in abundance from
antique cups ; and the table was lighted by the
most costly lustres of crystal. An astonishing
number of footmen and domestics, in superb
dresses, were eager to anticipate the wishes of
the guests. Nothing, in short, that luxury could
name was asked for in vain.

" Contrary to her general rule; the Empress
stayed till one o'clock in the morning. She
seemed afraid of disturbing the pleasure of her
host. When she retired, numerous .voices,
accompanied by the most harmonious instru-
ments, chanted a beautiful hymn to her praise.
She was so affected that she turned round to
Potemkin to express her satisfaction. The
latter, overpowered by the strong feeling of what
he owed to Her Majesty, fell on his knee, and,
seizing her hand, bedewed it with tears. . . ."

So writes Potemkin's German biographer.
The description has been quoted almost in full
partly because it is a description of the great
man's last conspicuous appearance in history,
partly because it leaves us with a true and
typical impression of him. He was great as a
statesman, a puller of wires, and an organiser
of victory ; greater still as an actor ; greatest
of all as a stage-manager. Appearances were
always more to him than realities. His life's
326

DEATH OF POTEMKIN

work, as we have seen, was to create the Pageant
of Russia — his conquests were chiefly valuable
to him as contributions to that Pageant.
Handling resources comparable with those of
Napoleon Bonaparte, he applied them to the
purposes of Mr. Louis Napoleon Parker.

This last pageant was intended to be his
greatest. It is no wonder that gossip saw a
secret symbolism and significance in it, and
surmised that it was not only a subject's act of
homage to his sovereign, but also a bride-
groom's feast to his bride. Gossip, it shall be
repeated, was almost certainly in error ; but
the end was so near that the mistake matters
little, and is hardly worth investigating.

Potemkin was but little over fifty, but his
way of life had prematurely aged him. He
returned to the seat of war, an invalid who
could hardly bear the jolting of his carriage —
a dying man, though he did not know it, and
though no specific disease was diagnosed. Know-
ing what we know of the climates in which he
had campaigned, we may suspect that malaria
had weakened him, and that a recurrence of
malaria was now his trouble ; but the actual
end was obviously hastened by his deliberate
neglect of his health. " He dismissed his
physicians," says his biographer, " lived upon
salt meat and raw turnips, and drank hot wines
and spirituous liquors ; " and there is other
evidence to the same effect.

According to Bezborodko, he refused medi-

327

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

cines, and insisted, when he was in a high
fever, upon throwing his w-indows wide open,
and dousing himself with iced water. According
to Langeron, he committed even greater f olHes —

" Prince Potemkin," writes this last witness,
" destroyed himself. I have seen him, in a fit
of fever, eat a ham, a salted goose, and three
or four fowls, and drink kvas, klouvka, hydromel,
and several bottles of various kinds of wine."

That was at Jassy. iVt last he decided to
leave Jassy for Okzakof, either because he
hoped to benefit from the change of air, or
perhaps, as his biographer suggests, "with a
view to expire on the theatre of his glory." The
rest may be told in his biographer's words —

" He set out on the 15th of October 1791, at
three o'clock in the morning. Scarcely had he
travelled a few versts when he could no longer
bear the motion of his carriage. He alighted.
A carpet was spread at the foot of a tree ; on
this he was placed. He had no longer strength
to utter a word ; he could only press the hand of
his favourite niece, Countess Branicki, who was
with him ; and he expired in her arms."

There are many accounts of the shock which
Catherine felt at the news. It was, she told
Grimm, " like a blow from a sledge hammer."
Potemkin was " my pupil, my friend, and well-
328

DEATH OF POTEMKIN

nigh my idol." Genet, the French Charge
d' Affaires, tells us she "fainted, and had to
be bled"; Chrapowicki that slie exclaimed, "I
and the rest of us henceforward will be no more
than snails that do not dare to thrust their horns
out of their shells." Count Rostopchin writes
that she paid all his debts, and the cost of the
great entertainment which he had given her.

But the way was now clear for Zubof, for
whom, pushing and obstinate and unscrupulous
though he was, the obstacles might have been
serious if Potemkin had lived to insist upon
barring the path to him.

329

CHAPTER XXIX

The unconscionable Manners and Conduct of Plato Zubof

No credence can be given to the report that
Potemkin's death was due to poison, and that
Plato Zubof was the poisoner. To a man in
a high fever, a surfeit of salt junk is quite as
likely to be fatal as any medicated potion.
We may safely take our stand on that fact
without laying stress on the negative results
of the autopsy. The circulation of the rumour
merely reflects the general reluctance of the
Russian mind to believe that any Russian
of high station has died a natural death, and
the particular impression, obviously widespread,
that Zubof wished Potemkin out of the way.
Zubof, in short, profited by an accident so
advantageous to him that it was not readily
accepted as an accident ; and he now stepped
into Potemkin's shoes, just as he had pre-
viously stepped into those of Mamonof. They
were far too large for his feet ; but he con-
tinued to wear them until the end of Catherine's
reign.

He was the dishonest son of a dishonest
330

ZUBOF

father : a provincial Vice-Governor, charged
with the superintendence of certain State
factories, and preferred, soon after his son's
promotion, to the office of Procureur- General
of the Senate. In the former capacity he was
suspected of committing arson, in order to
destroy ledgers the inspection of which would
have shown him guilty of fraud; in the latter,
his malversations were so scandalous as to
disgust — or, at all events, to inconvenience —
his son, who sent him back to a province in
which the standard of probity was even lower
than in the capital. The son's integrity, how-
ever, was on no higher level, though his privi-
leged position protected him. It has already
been stated that he was arrogant and un-
scrupulous ; and it must be added that he was
incompetent. His one virtue (if it be a virtue)
was his nepotism. He fastened his family on
the Russian Empire like a man applying leeches
to the body politic ; and his father was the
only leech removed for sucking the blood too
fast. A letter from Rostopchiti to Simon
Vorontsof shows what was thought of him by
those in a position to judge, and, at the same
time, shows how he imposed upon the Empress —

" Count Zubof is everything here. No one's
wishes but his are of any account. His power
is as great as that formerly enjoyed by Prince
Potemkin. But he is as careless and incapable
as he always was, though the Empress con-

331

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

tinually tells all and sundry that he is the
greatest genius Russia has ever produced."

It was not solely the infatuation of an
amorous old woman which made her boast
thus of her lover's ability. She also thought
of Zubof, as she had presumed to think of
Potemkin, as her pupil ; and it was her whim
to believe that all her pupils did credit to her
instruction. " Never before," she wrote to
Plato Zubof himself, " has a man of your years
had your means and opportunities of rendering
service to his country ; " and the favourite
let her say so, and seized the opportunity of
serving himself and his hungry relatives —
notably his brother Valerian, whom Catherine
called " a hero in every sense of the word "
because he came too near a cannon-ball, and
so lost one of his legs.

One can associate his name neither with
any domestic reform nor with any honourable
stroke of policy. " Follow the precedents,"
was his formula when referred to for instruc-
tions ; and the precedents were mostly bad
ones. " Nitchivo " became the watchword ;
the army lost its discipline ; the finances fell
into disorder. An absurd and unsuccessful
expedition to Persia stands to his discredit ;
and the further partition of Poland, involving
the deposition of Poniatowski, is attributed to
his insistence. One may conjecture that the
fact that Poniatowski had once been Catherine's
332

■OaJi4^4^^n^ Ai^ '£Uf<!^

ZUBOF

lover weighed with him — he was the sort of
man with whom such a fact would weigh.

Catherine was blind in the matter ; and
the flatterers surrounding her did not try to
open her eyes. On the contrary, a member
of the Senate, at a sitting of the Senate, praised
Zubof at Potemkin's expense, setting forth that
the former had annexed fertile and valuable
provinces, whereas the conqueror of the Crimea
had only added to the Empire " deserts infected
with the plague " ; while, at some public Con-
ference or other, an orator eloquently declared
that Plato Zubof was a far greater man than
Plato the disciple of Socrates. And meanwhile
Plato Zubof was stuffing his pockets with
roubles — 3,500,000 roubles, as we have already
said — by all manner of nefarious methods.

His most usual method was what in China
is called " the squeeze." Other favourites had
contented themselves with exploiting Catherine's
affection. They had asked her for roubles,
and, in due course, they had found roubles
under their pillows. Zubof also did that to
some extent; but his chief anxiety was to ex-
ploit his influence. Everything passed through
his hands, and some of it always stuck to
them. No advancement, favour, or decora-
tion could be obtained without his help ; and
he did not judge claims on their merits, but
charged a price for the " pull," which varied
according to the applicant's capacity for paying.
And all that with an insolence beside which

333

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

the insolence of Potemkin seems trivial and
colourless.

Potemkin's insolence, after all, had been
the insolence of the barbarian. It had been,
in part, the insolence of the vain man conscious
of great gifts and constitutionally incapable
of suffering fools gladly. Underneath his bluff-
ness, there had been a fundamental bonhomie.
The rough crust could be broken by anyone
who took him the right way — always excepting
the husbands who refused to be complacent.
We have seen how the Comte de Segur and
the Prince de Ligne contrived to break it.
Though he was not popular, he had friends as
well as enemies. The most significant fact
about Zubof is that he only had enemies : that,
in spite of the interested flattery bestowed
upon him when he was powerful, no one spoke
well of him after he had fallen, and none of
the Private Diaries or Secret Memoirs of the
time treat him otherwise than with loathing
and contempt.

It is from these, of course, that we derive
the picture of his insolence, which can only be
summed up as the insolence of a puppy ; and we
may borrow our first sketch from the pen of
Prince Adam Czartoryski, who came to St.
Petersburg from Poland, as a young man of
five - and - twenty, in order to plead for the
restitution of estates confiscated after the
suppression of Kosciusko's rebellion. lie was
well received in Russian society, and what
034

ZUBOF

he saw there he saw with fresh, if not unpre-
judiced, eyes. The progress of his private
affairs need not concern us ; but his impression
of Catherine's way of hfe — and of the attitude of
the Russian people towards that way of life —
may serve to introduce the subject —

" The prosperous reign of Catherine," Prince
Adam writes, " had confirmed the servility of the
Russian character, in spite of the penetration of
the country by a few rays of European civilisation.
Consequently the whole nation, whether of high
or of low degree, showed themselves in no way
scandalised by their sovereign's depraved morals,
or by the murders ascribed to her. She could do
whatever she liked. Her immorality was a holy
thing — it occurred to no one to criticise her
dissolute behaviour. All respected it, just as
the heathen used to respect the crimes and
obscenities of the gods of Olympus and the
Caesars of Rome."

Prince Adam was persuaded, however, that
the Empress, however licentious her personal life,
was jealous of her reputation for justice. He
placed his hopes on that, and, consulting his
Russian friends, was informed that, before seek-
ing to be presented to her, he must first attend
the levee of her favourite. Zubof, he learnt,
received visitors daily, on official business, at
eleven o'clock, while he was engaged with his
toilet. He went, with the rest, and found the

335

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

street compact " with coaches and four and
coaches and six, just as at the grand entrance
of a theatre." He was admitted, and found the
antechamber crowded with courtiers — officers of
high rank, important functionaries, provincial
governors among them — each waiting his turn,
and watching his chance to sohcit the redress of
his grievances or the satisfaction of his greed —

" The ceremony was always the same —
always as follows: The folding -doors were
thrown open, and Zubof entered with slow and
solemn deliberation, clad in a dressing-gown and
little else. He saluted the courtiers and the
suppliants with a stiff and almost imperceptible
bow. They stood around him in a deferential
semicircle, and he proceeded to dress. His
valets approached him, to comb and powder
his hair. While this was going on, one saw
other suppliants enter. They too, if the Count
happened to notice them, were greeted with a
chilly bow ; and they were all on the qui vive to
catch his eye. . . . We were all kept standing,
and no one dared to breathe a word. It was in
dumb show and in eloquent silence that each of
us tried to recommend the care of his interests
to the all-powerful favourite. If anyone did
speak, it was only in reply to a remark addressed
to him by the Count ; and that remark never
had any bearing on the subject of his request.
Often, indeed, the Count said nothing to any-
one ; and I cannot remember that he offered
336

ZUBOF

anyone a seat, unless it was Field-jMarshal Sol-
tikof, who was the leading personage at the
Court. Tutulmin, the despotic proconsul, the
terror, at that date, of Podolia and Volhynia,
though told to be seated, only dared to sit on
the edge of the chair. . . .

" While the favourite's hair was being dressed,
his secretary, Gribovski, handed him documents
which required his signature ; and the suppliants
told each other in whispers how much they had
had to pay Gribovski, in order to gain his master's
ear. Gribovski, like Gil Bias, received them
as haughtily as his master ; and when the pro-
cess of hair-dressing was complete, and a few
papers had been signed, the Count put on his
uniform, or his morning coat, and withdrew
to his apartments. All that was done with an
air of insolent indifference intended to impress
the audience as dignified gravity. There was
nothing natural about it — it was all deliberate,
and had been rehearsed. When the Count had
gone, the suppliants descended to their carriages
and drove away, some more some less dissatisfied
with their reception."

Very similar is the picture of the same scene
sketched in the Memoirs of Langeron, who, how-
ever, adds a few graphic details : that Zubof
commonly placed his feet on the dressing-table
during the ceremony ; that he often sat with his
back to the suppliants and inspected them with
the help of a looking-glass ; that those whom he
Y 337

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

beckoned to draw near him bowed till they bent
nearly double as they approached, and retired on
tiptoe when they were dismissed ; that many of
the suppliants attended the receptions for years
without ever receiving a word of recognition.
From another source we get a story of a general
officer so servile in his manner that he did not
venture to remonstrate or move when Zubof's
pet monkey perched itself on his head. The
picture of impertinent puppyism on the one
hand and shameless self-abasement on the other
could not be more complete.

Prince Adam, however, was one of the few
on whom the favourite smiled. He gained his
entree at Court, and was given some minor Court
appointment ; and to that fact we owe some
further vivid glimpses at the last inglorious
days of a great reign : a picture, for example,
of Catherine herself in her old age —

" She was an old woman, indeed, but still
hale and vigorous, short rather than tall, and
distinctly inclined to be fat. Her walk, her
bearing, and her whole personality, however,
were full of dignity. There were no brusque
movements — her manner was serious and noble ;
but she was like a river whose slow stream is
strong enough to carry everything before it.
Her face, wrinkled, but very expressive, bore
witness to her pride and her desire to dominate.
On her lips was an eternal smile, though, for
those who remembered what she had done,
338

ZUBOF

this studied calm was a mask concealing violent
passions and an inexorable will."

The last phrase, of course, reflects Polish
animosity too obviously for importance to be
attached to it ; but, that allowance made, the
vignette is valuable ; and so are the more
intimate pictures of Zubof which succeed it.
We are shown Zubof entertaining his equals ;
and our impression of his manners is as un-
pleasant as before. He invited them to be
seated, indeed — he could not well do less ; but,
for his own part, he lay, in negligent ease, at
full length on a sofa — this even when he was
entertaining Esterhazy and Cobentzel. And
he dropped hints wherefrom it was inferred
that, though Catherine was his mistress, he was
in reality pining for love of Princess Ehzabeth,
the sixteen-year-old bride of the Grand Duke
Alexander. Prince Adam's sketch of that pose
must be given —

" People were amazed at his presuming to
entertain this fancy under Catherine's very
eyes ; but as for the young Grand Duchess, she
took no notice of him whatsoever. His amorous
fits, so far as one could see, generally came on
after dinner, when we called upon him ; for
then he did nothing but sigh as he lay on the
sofa, with the melancholy air of a man whose
heart is oppressed by the weight of a secret
sorrow. Nothing could please him except the

339

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

melancholy and voluptuous strains of the flute ;
in short, he showed all the symptoms of a man
badly in love. A few of his intimates apparently
knew his secret ; at all events, they appeared
to establish themselves on a footing of sympathy
by knowing and pretending not to know. His
attendants said that, when he visited Catherine,
he left her as if overwhelmed with lassitude,
and with an air of gloom which made them
pity him. He used, at these times, to sprinkle
himself with perfumes, and received his callers
with a fatigued and sorrowful demeanour, which
no one failed to remark. But he would not
rest, representing that sleep robs us of a precious
portion of our lives."

Such was his pose, and we will leave him
posing. Our next extract must be a note on
the Sunday scene when the Empress, after taking
part in public worship, passed her Court on her
way back from the chapel to her apartments —

" I am told that it was on the occasion of
these church parades, which took place on every
Sunday and every Saint's Day, that the gallants
of the barracks used to oil their hair and scent
themselves, and put on their smartest uniforms,
and stand in a row in the hope of attracting
attention by their fine figures and manly beauty.
It is said, too, that it was no unknown thing
for one of them to succeed, though in our time
Catherine was too old for that sort of thing."
340

ZUBOF

A^Tiich is to say that, though Catherine
might have rivals, Zubof had none. There
follows this picture of Catherine's easy-going
manners with her favourite, and her favourite's
easy-going manners with her —

" Sleighing parties were organised. Catherine
liked sometimes to drive out in this style in
the morning ; and the gentlemen on duty had
to take their sleighs and accompany her. On
one of these occasions I saw Catherine en des-
habille, and Zubof quitting her apartment with
the air of a man who was quite at home there,
in his pelisse and Morocco leather boots ; but
neither the actors in the scene nor the spectators
of it seemed in the least embarrassed."

And then, to complete the picture, this ac-
count of the evening diversions of the Court —

" The Empress sat at a card-table with Zubof
and two other dignitaries. It was observed
that the favourite paid little attention either
to the game or to his sovereign, but continually
turned his eyes towards the table at which the
two Grand Duchesses and their husbands were
playing ; and it was astonishing that the Empress
never seemed to notice this, though everybody
else in the room was much impressed by it.
Anywhere but in the Empress's drawing-room,
such evenings would have seemed insufferably
tedious ; even there one was glad that they

341

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

were not unduly prolonged. The Empress did
not stay till supper- time, but left off playing
early, and withdrew to her private suite. She
bowed with dignity to the Princesses and the
company ; the folding-doors of her apartment
opened ; the Grand Dukes and the Grand
Duchesses also withdrew. Then Zubof made a
precisely similar bow, and followed the Empress
to her apartments ; the folding - doors closing
behind them — a proceeding which struck some
of us as rather singular."

Such were the typical scenes, and such were
the central figures of the scenes, of those last
years of Catherine's life, at which we must now
take a further glance frdm another point of
view.

342

CHAPTER XXX

Catherine's Family Life — Her Son and her Grandchildren

Catherine had long been a grandmother; her
grandchildren were now grown up. During the
reign of Zubof she arranged their marriages,
uniting the Grand Duke Alexander to Princess
Elizabeth of Baden, the Grand Duke Constantine
to a Princess of Saxe-Coburg. Little has been
said in these pages about her family affections ;
and little need be said. It is a characteristic of
Catherine, of which we must make what we can,
that the story of her personal life can be told
with hardly a reference to such matters. The
historian, of course, must take note of them ;
but the biographer, when once he has related
the circumstances of the birth of her son, finds
his interest diverted into other channels and
confined to them. Yet what inference to draw ?
What blame to assign — and to whom ?

One may start safely with the statement
that the obligations of family love were neither
impressed upon Catherine by the example of
her own parents nor encouraged in Russian im-
perial circles. We have seen her, when only a

343

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

child, married to a husband whom she did not
Hke, with Httle more ado than if she had been
sold into slavery, to satisfy ambitions whieh, at
the moment, were assuredly her parents' rather
than her own. We have seen her introduced
to a Court at which a drunken and dissolute
Empress kept a relative in prison — not on ac-
count of any crime that he had committed, but
for fear lest the factious should raise a rebellion in
his name. We have also seen her forbidden by
Elizabeth's Prime Minister to correspond with
her own mother, and admonished by Elizabeth
herself for wearing mourning for her own father
for more than a week — for a week, said Eliza-
beth, was quite long enough to mourn for any-
one except a king. These circumstances justify
nothing, of course ; but they explain much.

Moreover, Catherine's husband turned out to
be, as we have seen, not a better, but a very
much worse husband than she had hoped for.
Her union with him was barren, and he was
unfaithful ; and an heir was wanted, and in-
sidious suggestions were whispered in her ear.
Duty, she was told, depended upon circum-
stances. Chastity was a very good virtue in
its way, but there was a Higher Law. The
Higher Law enjoined the production of an heir
to the throne, by whatever means obtained.
Parents and guardians would not inquire too
closely into the means, provided the end were
achieved. Young Soltikof was very handsome,
very attractive, very much in love. If Catherine
344

THE GRAND DUKE PAUL

liked him, there really was no reason — and
there need be no difficulty — provided, of course,
that appearances were kept up, and no open
scandal was caused. . . .

So Paul was born ; and it is not only the
historical student whose mind is clouded with a
doubt concerning him. Catherine also had her
uncertainties. For it is not only uncertain
whether Peter was Paul's father — it is also
uncertain whether Paul was Catherine's child.
She bore a child, and it was taken away from
her — whether the child subsequently put into
her arms was the same child or a changeling,
none can say. The whole story is a mystery, of
a piece with the mysteries which so often
envelop critical occurrences in Russia. One
no more knows what really happened then in
the palace than one knows what happened, at
at other times, in the prisons.

It has been argued — notably by Masson —
that Catherine's dislike of Paul is our best proof
that Peter was Paul's father : that the mother
instinctively visited the faults of the father on
the child. It is conceivable ; but it is just as
likely that her prejudice against the child
sprang out of a doubt as to its identity : a
doubt confirmed, as the years passed, by the
development of the child's disposition — its ob-
vious lack of its supposed mother's talents,
intellectual interests, and power to please. A
bad start that : as unfavourable as it well could
be to the strengthening of those domestic ties

345

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

which make homes happy and families har-
monious.

And the bad start soon had a bad <?equei.
Not only was Paul an unsatisfactory boy —
stupid, morose, and unattractive ; he was also
a boy whom Catherine was obliged, from the
first, to regard as a possible rival — and a boy
whom insidious courtiers taught, in his im-
pressionable years, to think evil of his mother.
The indispensable Panin, it will be remembered,
had only collaborated in the revolution of 1762
with the idea of making Paul Emperor and
Catherine Regent during his minority. He had
been too fat to get his way. Catherine and the
Orlofs had been too quick for him. But his
proposal had not been forgotten. It continued
to inspire intrigues, though the intrigues never
came to anything. And Panin was Paul's tutor
— and Paul, somehow or other, was taught to
ask, What have they done with my father ?

He may be said to have grown up under the
shadow of that terrible question, so embarrassing
to those about him — hardly less embarrassing
to Catherine, who had profited by the crime
committed in the Ropscha prison, than to those
who, without her knowledge, had stained their
hands with blood to serve her cause. It became
a fixed idea with him — a haunting obsession
which still haunted him when he was called to
the throne. It is said that he then exhumed
his father's body and placed it on the throne.
It is better accredited that he disinterred his
346

THE GRAND DUKE PAUL

father's skull, and had it laid on the altar, while
the people sang a Te Deum. It is certain that
he sent for Alexis Orlof, whom he persisted in
regarding as his father's murderer, and com-
pelled him to mount guard for two days beside
his father's coffin.

Between such a son and such a mother
affectionate and confidential relations could not
conceivably subsist. There was no way out of
the emotional tangle except for Catherine to go
her way and let Paul go his — keeping, the while,
a close eye and a tight hand on him to prevent
him from making mischief. She did so ; and
not only their paths but also their characters
diverged. Catherine saw to it that Paul was
suitably educated and suitably married — for
that was a political necessity. Since he had the
same military tastes as Peter, she let him have
soldiers of his own to drill — though never enough
to be a possible source of danger to her ; but he
was never one of the pupils whom it delighted
her to " form." No opening was found for him
either in civil or in military affairs. When he
went to the Swedish war, the general was speci-
ally instructed to give him no information as to
his plans ; and he had to live with restricted
liberty, an empty purse, and the fear before his
eyes that, when the succession to the throne
came to be settled, he would be passed over in
favour of one of his own sons.

It was a hard case ; and one would sympa-
thise if one could find anything in his character

347

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

responsive to sympathy : but that is how he
differs from Catherine. She, at any rate, what-
ever her faults, knew how to charm her con-
temporaries ; and a good deal of her charm still
subsists in spite of the stiffening of the standards
of morality in modern Courts. One still admires
her daring, her intellectual alertness, her pride
in her petit menage^ her patronage of the
arts, her open-handed liberality, her refusal to
bear malice when she was *' treated badly,"
and her amiability when she put off the Auto-
crat at her hours of ease. These virtues still
cover a multitude of shortcomings ; and they
cloaked those shortcomings even more effectu-
ally during her life. Of those who were privi-
leged to see much of her, there was hardly one
who did not " make allowances " and speak
kindly. Lord Malmesbury, who took to St.
Petersburg something uncommonly like a Non-
conformist Conscience, is almost the sole excep-
tion to the rule.

Of Paul, on the other hand, it is almost
equally exceptional to find anyone speaking
well, unless it be when he is praised out of
malice aforethought, as an indirect reflection on
Catherine. The Chevalier de Corberon pictures
him as an unlicked, but self-conscious, cub, ill
at ease in his uniform, and always trying to
remember how his dancing-master had taught
him to hold himself. The typical anecdotes
represent him as stupid, ill-tempered, boorishly
and sullenly rude, and of an autocratic pride
348

THE GRAND DUKE PxVUL

without parallel even in the most autocratic
circles.

The view commonly taken of his mental
endowments is best illustrated by an anecdote
of a brief dialogue which passed between him
and Zubof in Catherine's presence. " I agree
with M. Zubof," said the Grand Duke, apropos
of no matter what. " Eh ! You agree with
me ? How's that ? Have I said something
foolish ? " was the favourite's insolent re-
joinder ; but in most of the stories it is the
Grand Duke who figures as insolent. Baroness
Oberkirch tells us, in her Memoirs, how he in-
sulted Clerisseau, the architect, at Paris, when he
was taking his grand tour. " Why do you re-
fuse to speak to me, my lord ? " the architect
ventured to ask him, when he was taken to see a
building which was one of Clerisseau's master-
pieces. " Because I have nothing to say to
you, sir," Paul retorted ; and when Clerisseau
protested that he should have to tell the Empress,
with v>fhom he was in correspondence, how he
had been treated by her son : " Very well, sir,"
said Paul. " Tell her that you are blocking my
way. I have no doubt she will be much obliged
to you."

One could infer the relations of mother
and son from that anecdote if one did not
know it from other sources ; and one could
draw an identical inference from the scraps
of their correspondence which have been pre-
served —

349

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

" My dear Mother, — Your Imperial
Majesty's letter gave me great pleasure, and I
beg your Imperial Majesty to accept my thanks,
and at the same time to believe in the respect
and attachment with which I sign myself ..."

" My dear Son, — I have received your
letter of the fifth of this month, assuring me
of your sentiments. My own sentiments are
similar. Good-bye. I hope you will keep well."

They had no more to say to each other than
that, and they drifted farther and farther apart ;
and one can say little except that Catherine's
attitude partly explains Paul's, and that Paul's
partly explains Catherine's.

Most likely Paul was mad. If one believed
that he was Peter's son, one would say that he
inherited Peter's insanity and absurdity. As it
is, one has to take him on his merits, and pro-
nounce, after careful inquiry, that he had few.
Living in terror of assassination, he behaved
with the cruelty of cowards — inflicting the
cruelty with the grotesque and capricious humour
of a maniac. The story which best reveals him
in a flash is that of his reply to the stranger
who presumed to ask him who were the most
important men in the Russian Empire. " Sir,"
he answered, " there is no important man in
the Russian Empire except the man to whom I
am speaking, and he is only important as long
as I am speaking to him."
350

THE GRANDCHILDREN

One could supplement that anecdote with
many stories of floggings, executions, and banish-
ments ; but such matters belong to the record
of his reign rather than of Catherine's. Enough
to recall here the story of the officer who, for
invidiously contrasting the two reigns, had his
tongue cut out and was exiled to Siberia — and
to note that these barbarities, being the bar-
barities of a weak man, made his ultimate doom
inevitable : a palace revolution in favour of
his son Alexander, with Zubof for one of the
conspirators.

So that it must be granted that Catherine's
estrangement from her son does not, in view
of all the circumstances, stamp her as an un-
natural mother. She was not at all sure that
Paul was her son, and she was quite sure that
he was not the sort of man she would have
liked her son to be. But she was a woman of
great emotional vivacity and expansiveness; and,
the normal avenues of emotion being closed to
her, she had to find other outlets for it.

At times, and to some extent, she found such
outlets in her affection for her grandchildren
— and in particular for the future Emperor
Alexander. "I dote on him," she wrote to
Grimm ; and she taught Alexander his alphabet,
and let him bring his toys and play with her,
and designed a frock for him of a new original
pattern, which she exhibited with pride to the
King of Sweden and the Prince of Prussia.
She boasted, too, like any other grandmother,

351

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

of his precocity, and, in particular, of his pre-
cocious sensibility. It was a proud moment
when he ran crying to tell her that the poor
sentinel outside the door was shivering with
the cold ; a prouder moment still when she
heard people say that he " took after " her in
thus showing consideration for his inferiors ;
the proudest moment of all when he stammered
out that he would rather be like his grandmother
than like his parents.

Whether the grandson who conceived the
horrible idea of the Holy Alliance really derived
much moral and spiritual inspiration from the
grandmother who danced to the piping of eight-
eenth-century philosophers is another question,
too large to be entered upon here. Religion,
at any rate, cannot have been the link between
them ; for Catherine was merely a rationalist
who conformed in order that she might not
shock, whereas Alexander was to become a
superstitious mystic whom devout women
wheedled. But no matter. The real point claim-
ing notice is that there does exist some material
— though not perhaps very much — for thinking
of Catherine as a matron who found her truest
happiness in the nursery : a grandmother of the
Gracchi, saying with proud affection, " These
are my jewels." A certain portion of her en-
thusiasm indubitably took that outlet.

The rest of it, as we have seen, was lavished
on her favourites : hrst on dashing young
soldiers like Soltikof and Andrew Czernichef ;
352

CATHERINE S CHARACTER

then on Poniatowski, the Man of Feehng ; then
on Gregory Orlof, the Strong Man who made
a revolution for her ; finally on subalterns
young enough to be her sons, some of them
nonentities and others puppies, with no qualities
beyond those of a barber's block to recommend
them. In the case of a German woman, one
naturally looks for a German word to describe
the turmoil in her heart, and perhaps the word
schwdrmerei may be useful. It implies en-
thusiasm rather than passion ; and certainly
enthusiasm rather than passion was the char-
acteristic of Catherine's affections. She never
passed, as the passionate do, from love to hatred,
when passion ceased to be returned. Our im-
pression is rather of enthusiasms dwindling,
but leaving pleasant memories behind them,
when other enthusiasms spring up to take their
place.

It is true, of course, that her enthusiasms
included rather more than the word schwdr-
merei commonly implies ; but that was almost
inevitable in the circumstances in which she
lived. She had the temperament of those to
whom the Apostle of the Gentiles addressed
his famous warning that "it is better to marry
than to burn " ; but the dilemma did not pre-
sent itself as a real one either to her of to any
of her advisers. When she talked of marrying,
her Senate, as we have seen, raised objections,
but added that no objection would be taken to
her distinguishing her subjects with her favours,
z 3o3

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

Since she was thus forbidden to unite herself
to any one of them by any permanent tie, there
remained no reason other than her caprice for
favouring one of them in preference to another,
or for confining her favours to any single favourite.
Nobody expected her so to confine them, and
she did not ; but her amours never wronged
a wife or broke up a home, though she ran the
gamut of the emotions which she needed.

That need for emotion, indeed, — coupled with
the fact that so many natural outlets of emotion
were closed to her, — is the master key to any
riddle which her character still seems to present.
At heart she was as little Messalina as she was
Semiramis, but a German bourgeoise, who re-
quired to exercise her heart as an athlete re-
quires to exercise his limbs. She wanted the
common lot, though she could not obtain it in
the common way. In her own way she came
to experience a good deal of it — its tears as
well as its triumphs. Her heart, in short, was
sincere, though it was also elastic, and, in the
end, showed rather more elasticity than a senti-
mentalist can quite admire.

For Catherine did not, like George Sand,
know how to grow old with dignity. Looking
at the sentimental side of her life, one has to
admit that she lingered too long on the stage,
and in so lingering made herself ridiculous.
There is no dignity whatever — there is nothing
that is not sad or laughable — in the picture
of those last years during which she let an in-
354

CATHERINE'S CHARACTER

sufferable young puppy fool her, while he robbed
and insulted her subjects. That is the truth,
and it must be told ; but there is no need for
telling it with a wry face or a superior sneer.
Catherine was a foolishly amorous old woman
— there is no denying that. But she was the
wreck of a woman who had been great, and,
if better advised, might have been greater ; a
woman whose circumstances had been as adverse
to the formation of a fine character as circum-
stances well can be, and whose character had
nevertheless preserved many elements of grace
and grandeur ; a woman, therefore, whose final
philanderings, unbecoming though they were,
are a theme not for scorn and laughter, but
for tears and pity.

And so to the closing scenes.

355

CHAPTER XXXI

Last Years and Death

Zubof's arrogance continued unabated to the
last. Perhaps he felt that arrogance — with the
humility of courtiers for its complement — was
a condition of self-respect in circumstances in
which men, as a rule, do not respect themselves.
To give it due prominence, one must add yet
another sketch, taken from the Letters of Ros-
topchin, the Saint -Simon of his age and
country —

" You will be surprised to hear that General
Melessino, when he received the Grand Cordon
of the Order of Vladimir the other day from
M. Zubof, actually kissed his hand. Moreover,
there is here a Lieutenant-General Kutusof —
he who was formerly Ambassador at Constan-
tinople. What do you think that man does ?
He comes an hour before Count Zubof rises, and
makes his coffee for him, pretending that it is
an art in which he possesses special skill ; and,
in the presence of a crowd of people, he pours
it out, and carries the cup to the favourite in
his bed."
856

LAST YEARS

At the same time, if we may believe Ros-
topchin, — and there is no particular reason why
we should not, — the Empire of All the Russias,
like the Empire of ancient Rome, was being
destroyed by the prevalent corruption. The
civilisation which Catherine had introduced had
been something more than a veneer. She had
imitated the West, whereas Peter the Great
had only parodied it. Her ideals had been
generous and elevated, and they had in part
been carried out. She had tried to live up to
the expectations of the French Encyclopaedists ;
she had in part succeeded. Her Court, in spite
of Lord Malmesbury's opinion of it, had aban-
doned the orgies which of old distinguished it.
Vice (if anyone insists upon the word) had lost,
if not all its grossness, at least a noticeable
proportion of it. Such revels as caused scandal
at Potemkin's headquarters had not been in-
cluded in the common round in Catherine's
palaces. Machinery was in motion, and doing
its work. There was visible, and indeed con-
spicuous, progress towards refinement, culture,
tolerance, and education.

But the work was only begun, not finished.
The machinery was not in such order that it
could run by itself ; and the ruling classes of
Russia, whose business it was to keep it running,
were the people of whom it was justly said that
they were "rotten before they were ripe." So
now, inevitably, as Catherine was growing old,
there was reaction and reversion to type. She

357

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

was reaching the age at which the arteries
harden. The hardening of the arteries was to
be the cause of her sudden death ; but we can
also trace its effect in the stiffening of her
ideas, her neglect of the duties of government,
and her readiness, in the face of new condi-
tions, to fall back upon old-fashioned, cast-iron
prejudices.

The French Revolution is the touchstone ;
her attitude towards it is the test. She had been
the friend, and even the pupil, of the theorists
whose ' ideas it put in practice ; but it baffled
her, and made her angry — it may even be said
to have set her scolding. She could not see
that it was pregnant with the reforms for which
she had professed enthusiasm — such reforms as
no benevolent despot ever yet succeeded in
bringing to birth. She only saw in it a sugges-
tion that all autocrats must make haste to stand
shoulder to shoulder, before evil overtook them.
In that way, and to that extent, she did antici-
pate the idea of her grandson's Holy Alliance
— albeit in the spirit of a scared old woman, and
not of the perfervid mystic who believed that
it was his divine mission to trample upon
prostrate peoples.

It is intelligible. The abolition of feudal
rights may well have frightened an Autocrat
who was accustomed to give away serfs more
freely than modern sovereigns give away scarf-
pins. She could not be expected to see in such
transactions the recommencement of the world's
358

LAST YEARS

great age, or the return of tlie golden years.
Most likely she would still have taken the line
she took if she had been in the hands of good ad-
visers, and able conscientiously to lay her hand
upon her heart and say that her own Empire, at
any rate, stood in no need of revolution. As
a matter of fact, she was in bad hands, and her
Empire needed revolution badly.
Let us quote Rostopchin again —

" You can have no idea how shockingly our
men and their officers are behaving in Poland.
They are the same men as before, but they have
become heartless, and are more like highway
robbers than soldiers. Have you heard of the
atrocities which are being committed at Warsaw
— wives torn from their husbands, and daughters
from their fathers, and no complaints allowed ?
The peasants pillaged till they are driven to
despair — the nobles treated worse than their
slaves ? Yesterday ninety thousand Polish
peasants were distributed among seventy-two
persons. Count Zubof took thirteen thousand
of them — valued at a hundred thousand roubles
a year — and Rumantzof and Suvorof took seven
thousand each. . . .

" In the Caucasus people are denouncing
the atrocities perpetrated by General Paul
Potemkin. The barbarities of the Spaniards in
the New World, and of the English in the Indies,
are nothing to those of our military philosopher,
who spends part of his time in translating

359

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

Rousseau's Helo'ise, and the rest of it in executing
all persons whose property excites his greed.
They say he is sure to go unpunished because he
is so rich."

It is impossible to say what Catherine
knew of this — most likely she knew very little.
Just as Potemkin had deceived her with his
" property " villages and his stage armies of
loyal and prosperous subjects, so Zubof may
be supposed to have blinded her eyes to the
corruption and cruelty which were going on
by his pleasant manners and plausible tales of
military glory. Moreover, she had other things
to think about. Rostopchin adds something
to a story which we have already glanced at
in the pages of Adam Czartoryski —

"Some of her people threw out hints to
her concerning her favourite's passion for the
Grand Duchess Elizabeth. She caught them
exchanging glances, and there was a scene.
She sulked for a few days, and then made it
up again ; but she was very angry with old
Count Stackelberg, whom she suspected of
being in the confidence of the lovers ; and she
made herself so unpleasant to him that that
aged courtier had to quit the Court."

So that, if Catherine found happiness in
love at times, she certainly did not find it
always ; and her doubts of the sincerity of
360

ILLNESS OF CATHERINE

Ziibof's affection were not her only trouble.
She was also distressed by the failure of the
marriage which she had planned between her
granddaughter and the Prince of Sweden. The
insuperable object there was the religious one.
The Prince being a Swedenborgian, there was
a diflficulty about allowing his wife to worship
publicly in Stockholm, according to the Ortho-
dox rite. Somehow or other, the negotiations
were bungled, and the match had to be broken
off, after the date of the wedding had been
fixed, in circumstances similar to those which
sometimes come to light in a bad breach of
promise case. " I leave you to imagine,"
Catherine wrote to her Ambassador at Stock-
holm, *' how very indecent their behaviour
has been."

She was upset, and the shock — helped,
perhaps, by the shock which Zubof's conduct
had brought about — affected her health. She
was a woman of strong constitution, hardly ever
known to be ill ; but her arteries were harden-
ing, and, when that happens, shocks are serious
matters. Rostopchin notes her indisposition —

" Her state of health is unsatisfactory.
She no longer walks. In the latter days of
September she experienced a shock — was said
to have been affected by a thunderstorm —
a strange occurrence in this country, and
unparalleled since the death of the Empress
Elizabeth. She is keeping her room."

361

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

No more than that. There were no obvious
grounds for anxiety. The Court felt none ;
and the gaieties of the Palace went on as usual.
On the evening of 16th November Catherine
spoke jestingly of death ; and on the morning
of the 17th, she told the maid who called her
that she had never slept better in her life.
But a few hours later couriers were galloping
in hot haste with news for Paul.

Paul was at Gatchina, which is half a day's
journey from St. Petersburg, — despised, neg-
lected, and practically exiled, — on bad terms
with Catherine, and on worse terms with Zubof.
" It is a point of pique with them," writes Ros-
topchin, " to make clear to each other their
respective positions as Grand Duke and subject ;
but the subject is the great man and the Grand
Duke is a nullity." He continues—

" He is being treated even worse than usual.
Last summer, for instance, when he wanted
to go to Pavlovski, he was told that the journey
would cost too much money, and that he must
stop where he was. When one is a Grand Duke
of Russia, and is forty-one years old, and is
treated by one's future subjects as if one were
a naughty boy, it is no wonder if one fumes
with suppressed rage ; and that is what the
Grand Duke is doing."

And then (so the story goes), on the night
of 16th November, Paul had a dream. It
362

DEATH OF CATHERINE

seemed to him that some invisible and snper-
natural force was laying hold of him and lifting
him up to heaven. He fell asleep again ; but
the same vision revisited him — an obsession
which he could not shake off. He told the
Grand Duchess, who was lying awake beside
him, and learnt that her slumbers too had been
broken by a precisely similar dream. They
agreed that they had received some super-
natural warning — whether of good or of evil
they must wait to see.

They waited, wondering — fearful rather than
hopeful ; and while they were taking their
after-dinner coffee, the mystery was solved.
Nicolas Zubof, one of the favourite's brothers,
came riding up the avenue towards them. He
dismounted, left his horse, and approached
on foot ; and Paul turned pale. " It is all up
with us — we are lost," he cried, assuming that
this was the signal for his deportation ; but, a
moment later, Nicolas was on his knees an-
nouncing that the Empress lay at the point of
death — that no hopes of her recovery were
entertained.

It was a little after three o'clock — and Nov-
ember days are short in Russia. A carriage was
instantly ordered ; and the Grand Duke and
Duchess drove off in the twilight. Nicolas
Zubof had already ridden ahead, to arrange
that fresh horses should be ready at every stage.
Rostopchin met him on the road, drunk and
blasphemous — threatening to harness the post-
363

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

master himself to the carriage if the horses were
not forthcoming promptly. Other messengers,
only a little behind the first, were met upon the
way, bringing the same news. The Grand Dukes
Alexander and Constantine had sent couriers ;
so had several of the Court officials ; so had even
the Chief Cook and the Chief Fishmonger. Hav-
ing delivered their messages, they turned and
followed Paul's carriage. A swelling procession
galloped along the St. Petersburg road in the
moonlight, Paul saying the while to Rostop-
chin the things which it is proper for the heir
to a great Empire to say at such an hour —

" Wait, my friend, wait ! I have lived
forty-two years in the world. God has so far
supported me. No doubt He will give me the
strength and the ability to bear the burden which
I am destined to assume. Let us place all our
trust in His divine goodness."

At half-past eight in the morning, they
reached the Palace, and Paul heard exactly
what had happened. Catherine had risen, and
breakfasted, and adjourned to the room in
which it was the custom for her secretaries and
her ministers to attend her. They had waited
to be summoned, and the summons had not
come. Anxiety had at last been felt, and
servants had been sent to make inquiries.
They had knocked, and there had been no answer.
They had waited a little longer, and then entered
364

DEATH OF CATHERINE

without knocking, and found their Empress
lying unconscious on the floor ; and her physician
had been fetched in haste.

" Apoplexy," he said. He would bleed her —
he would apply blisters to her feet. But it was
a bad case — there was little hope that the
remedies would save her.

Nor did they. Once Catherine opened her
eyes and spoke — but only to ask for water.
Then to the struggle for life succeeded the agony
of death ; the physicians kneeling by the bedside,
and wiping the flecks of foam from the dying
woman's lips — her maid Marie bending over
her, and sobbing as if her heart would break ;
while, in an adjoining apartment, Paul and the
ministers and the courtiers waited, anticipated,
considered, and prepared — some of them hoping,
some of them fearing, none of them certain what
the imminent future would bring forth. For
there were certain sealed papers — a ukase, per-
haps— a will, no doubt — material, at any rate,
for a trial of strength between the favourite and
the heir. But Zubof's nerve was faihng him,
while Paul's was not —

" I have never seen," writes Rostopchin,
" anything resembling the favourite's despair.
By what emotion he was most violently agitated
I cannot say ; but his premonition of his com-
ing fall was depicted not only in his countenance,
but in every movement that he made. As he
crossed the Empress's room, he stopped, again

365

COMEDY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT

and again, before the body, and burst into a
storm of sobs. . . . Let me tell you what I
observed. As I entered the waiting-room, I saw
Prince Zubof seated in a corner. The courtiers
avoided him as if he were plague-stricken. Over-
come with fatigue and thirst, he did not even
dare to ask for something to drink. I sent a
servant to him, and myself poured out the glass
of water refused to him by those who, twenty-four
hours previously, had depended for their fortunes
on his smiles. This hall in which men had
crowded to compete for the honour of a word from
him was now, so far as he was concerned, a
barren steppe."

So complete was the fall of the mighty ;
completer still when, in obedience to Paul's
order, he fetched a sealed packet, and Paul,
finding in it a ukase setting him aside from
the succession, slowly tore it into tiny fragments.
And then — the question of the succession thus
rudely and autocratically settled — there was
heard the strong voice of Count Samoilof making
the announcement which at once summoned the
Grand Duke to reign and doomed him to a
violent death —

" Gentlemen ! The Empress Catherine is
dead, and His Majesty Paul Petrovitch has
deigned to ascend the throne of All the Russias."

366

INDEX

Alexander, Grand Duke, 324, 343,

351.
Anne Leopoldovna, Grand

Duchess, 10.
Anton - Ulrich of Brunswick,

Prince, 10.
Aprakhsin, General, 59, 65.

Bariatinski, Prince, 97, 117.
Behmer, Charlotte, 238.
Bestuchef, Chancellor, 11, 21-22,

47-50. 55-59. 61, 65-66, 70,

149-151, 154.
Betzkoy, General, 247.
Bruce, Countess, 219.

Catherine, Empress, i, et passim.
Choglokof, Mme, 29, 32-33, 36,

38, 42, 44.
Christian - Augustus of Anhalt-

Zerbst, Prince, i, 7, 11.
Colhard, nee Cardel, Madeleine,

3-4-
Constantine, Grand Duke, 270,

324. 343-
Corberon, Chevalier de, 235 et seq.
Courland, Princess, 28.
Czartoryski, Prince Adam, 334-

335. 338-339.
Princess, 48.
Czernichef, Andrew, 31-32, 41.
Zachar, 37.

Dashkof, Princess, 73, 75-77, 93,

96, 102, 111-114, 125, 211.
Dick, Sir John, 170-172, 177.
Diderot, Denis, 132, 180-185, 187.
Divier, Count, 32.
Dolgoruki, Prince, 316.

Eliza'beth, Empress, 9-10, 43,
45-47. 5(^, 61-64, 68-76,
79-81.

Elizabeth of Holstein - Gottorp,

Princess, 2, 6.
Elphinston, Admiral, 170.
Engelhart, Barbe, 315.

Frederick the Great, i, 6-7, 11,
55, 84, 114, 166-167.

Geoffrin, Mme, 157.

Hamilton, Sir William, 177.
Harris, Sir Joseph, 243.
Hyndford, Lord, 19.

Ivan VI., 9, 72-73, 88-89, 1 19-128.

Joseph II. of Austria, 286-289.

Korsakof, Sergeant, 241-243,
245-247-

Lanskoi, M., 247-251, 254.

Lehadrof, Count, 50.

Lestocq, M., 71, 79, 83.

Ligne, Prince de, 274-276, 278,

280, 288-289, 292, 308, 312 et

seq,, 322.

Mamonof, Count, 260-265, 268,
280-281, 283, 288-289, 294-

304-
ManteuUel, Comte de, 202.
Michael, Isar, 12.
Munnich, Marshal, 84, loi, 105-

109, 112.

Narishkin, Leon, 38.

Orlof, Count Alexis, 73, 77-78,
80-81, go, 92, 94, 96-97, 107,
115-117, 125, 169-172, 176-
178, 294, 347.

367

INDEX

Orlof, Count Gregory, 73, 77-82,
90, 94. 97, 109, 137-139. MS-
ISO. 155-156, 160-162, 164,
195, 198-212.

Panin, Count, 73, 75, 77, 81, 93,

99, III, 115, 117-119, 155,

169, 227-229, 346.
Passik, Captain, 92-93, 95, 99.
Paul, Grand Duke, 73, 87-88, 133,

345-351. 362-366.
Peter the Great, 129-131.
Peter - Ulrich, afterwards Peter

III., 10, 15, 17-18, 20-29,

33-34. 44. 46. 53-54. 56.

63-65. 73. 81-90, 94-99. loi,

103-119, 123.
Poniatowski, Count Stanislas, 48,

50-55, 61, 67-68, 74, 78-79,

145-147, 156-159, 162, 168,

281-284.
Potemkin, Prascovia, 316.

Prince, 117, 213-234, 244-247,

251. 255-259, 264-265, 273,

280, 284-287, 290-291,

304-330.
Pugachef, 189-194.

Radzivil, Prince, 175-177.
Razumoiski, 153-154, 172.
Richardson, William, quoted,

141-143.
Rostopchin, M., quoted, 356,

359-364-
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 135-139.

Sabatier de Cabres, M., quoted,

162-163.
Saint-Pierre, Bcrnardin de, 197-

Samoilof, Count, 366.
Schercr, J. B., quoted, 167.
Schouvalof, Alexander, 61-62, 66,
104.
Ivan, 81.
Segur, M. de, 257-258, 260-261,
270, 276, 278-280, 286-287,

291. 305. 310-
Soltikof, Sergius, 38-44, 47,

87-89.
Spiridof, Admiral, 169-170.

Talitzin, Admiral, 107.
Tarakanof, Princess, 170-178.

Vasilchikof, Lieutenant, 202-204,

218, 222.
Voieikof, Major, 99.
Voltaire, M. Arouet de, 134-135.
Vorontsof, Elizabeth, 56, 64, 73,

86-88, 98, 108.
Simon, 99, 104, 151, 153-154.

Williams Charles Hanbury, 49-50,

55. 57-
Wraxall, Sir Nathaniel, 78-79,

170, 172.
Wysocki, 198.

Yermolof, 255-258, 266.

Zavadovski, 229, 231-234, 239-

240, 264.
Zinovief, Mile, afterwards

Princess Orlof, 211-212.
Zoritch, Lieutenant, 234-235,

240-245, 264.
Zubof, Count Plato, 299-301,

303-304, 320, 330-342. 356.

359-361, 365-366.

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